Ceramic jack o lantern

This is a simple fairly simple clay project that you could probably do with older elementary students say in 4th or 5th grade. I made it is part of a hand building clay class I am taking. This was made with two pinch pots one stacked on top of the other. A coil was rolled and put over the seam then smoothed out. I made the lines on the pumpkin with a oval shaped chopstick but the rounded edge of a Popsicle stick would probably do. After the bisque firing I just used a orange acrylic paint on it and let parts of the stoneware color of the clay show through on the lines and the stem.A hole was cut in the bottom and on Halloween I am going to out a battery powered tea light in it. You could also vary this to be a pumpkin and skip the Halloween holiday edge then it could be a table topper for thanksgiving or other fall occasions as well.Just be sure if making the pumpkin variation that you cut a hole in the top or bottom to let the air out before firing.

Hurray for small sucesses!

So I have been tutoring this really cool 5th grade student. He has wanted for years now to be nominated his school art teachers "Student of the month". He drew all the time on his own and his grandmother had been trying to find him a private art tutor for awhile. I have been showing him pen and ink techniques, using watercolor, using pastels, talked to him a lot about shading things, perspective of objects and how objects change in size and color when in the background. We have also drawn real life objects and focused on their shading.

He went to his art teacher and showed him the drawings we had been working on together and he was nominated student of the month. He was very proud of himself and they put up his drawings on a display board in school. His mother showed me pictures of him with his teachers in front of it.