Clay Lilly Pads

It is really hard to pick a favorite with these awesome projects this year... this is just another amazing project from Tracy Hare and our 3rd grade, our Visiting Artist for the 2018 clay week, feel free to see all the projects from this year by clicking here. I'm not going to get into how this clay project was created due to the fact that I wasn't there, and it's Tracy's lesson... Let these images be an inspiration for you rather than a lesson plan. What I can share about is our finishing techniques.

We looked at some images of Monet's waterlilies to show that he doesn't always use just green when creating his painting and it would be OK if we used more colors than just green as well for our creations.

Again, we used tempera cakes, explained in the K's, 1st and 2nd-grade lessons from this year (click here). I thought it was interesting how the students used this little lily pad to express a mini ecosystem. Some just had a flower on the pad, but others placed frogs, snails, snakes, and one even had an American flag on it.  It created a lot more work for the painting, so for this project, the decorating took the whole hour.

When finished, I placed them in the mixture of 3 parts water and 1 part pearl medium. See video. 

Take a look at some of their work...