The children have continued to develop a greater vocabulary when it comes to working with clay. So far this semester we have rolled, poked, flattened, cut, and pinched. Today, we talked about how we can make different designs in a flat piece of clay. We used shaping sticks as a tool to develop designs that were curvy, straight, holey, and twirly.
The children began by making different shaped lines that moved from top to the bottom of the square piece of clay. Quickly, they started poking holes and working on covering the entire clay piece.
These are some pieces that the children created independently. Once the children found a design or movement that they preferred, they typically stuck to that method of changing the clay.
We discussed the different reasons to make designs and markings in our clay. The children's ideas consisted of making faces, letters, and teeth.
Many of the children had different techniques to their process of changing the clay.
We also talked about how we can transform the clay back to a blank space by rubbing and pressing on the clay. Several of the children worked on this too.
Some of the children's ideas to the question I asked,
"How can you change the clay with your movements?"
- "I'm pressing it."
- "I am poking holes all over."
- "I can twist it to make a circle."
- "I can cut it when I pull this stick."
During this experience and thought process, the children were developing ideas of cause and effect, strengthening fine motor skills, enhancing skills of representation of thoughts, and building communication and vocabulary that they can use throughout their play.
We will continue this experience to see how it develops into different, more consistent movements of design and how it changes their ideas of how they can represent their ideas through project work in other areas of the classroom.
