I was talking about some air dry clay I bought at a curriculum meeting and a coworker, Tana Puppe, suggested I make clay owls. She showed me some images of her K's work and I fell in love. You know when your eyes are opened to something, you start seeing them everywhere. Well, that is the case of the owls. I started seeing them on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. It seemed like the perfect project for my K's. Thanks for the inspiration, Instagram- @youngschoolartwithmr.g and Twitter- @merryksart (They are must follows)
At first glance, these appear a bit 'crafty' (dare I say it on an Art Blog), but really, they had much deeper meaning. To introduce these owls, I had my students put their hands in a bag and guess what was inside. We talked about Tactile Texture being something you can touch.
I gave the instructions to the clay in little bits. I brought them to the carpet after every step of creating these sweet little treats. The lesson I created looked something like this (broke down a lot for the K's).
When adding the color, we found that spray paint worked the best. Tempera cakes and watercolor were very wet and made the hardened clay get sticky. It kind of was a huge mess. So then I had them place their owls on their name tag and then put it on the tray that of their choice with three options of spray paint. I sprayed them, put the plastic lace on, and glued the eyes and beak on. This was more than I like to do with a students project, but it was so treasured by each student, as I knew it would be. It was worth it.
Students loved stringing the beads. Some created patterns, but others went a little more freestyle. I still see the kids wearing them around the school, now two weeks later.
If the kids got done early, they did a drawing of their necklace. There's always time for observational drawing!
Love this little project, and the kids did too!
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