Week 2 Sculpture

DAS CLAY
Embellished Name Plates
DAS Air Hardening Modeling Clay Compound
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Homework 9/29 Reports:
Students discussed sculptures they had seen during the week. We also discussed their amazement at how plain, everyday Playdough could produce such a solid, decorative piece of sculpture. Several of the younger students left their pieces in the class which I brought home and completed by turning daily for them. They took their completed pieces home with them this week.

Class Objective:
This class introduced the students to an altogether different clay than last week. DAS Modeling Compound was used. This clay air dries quickly and cracks easily. It must be worked much faster than the Playdough of last week's class. However, they learned that this kind of clay could be softened with a little water and cracks could be repaired and made smoother by applying water to its surface. It was certainly much messier, (which most of them liked) so, the students got a good feel of a different clay texture. There was class discussion on it's different properties while they worked. They also learned that in the future, DAS clay could be thinned with water to make it much more pliable and could also be thinned enough to pour into a mold, although setting time until it could be removed from the mold to produce a final sculpture would take longer.

Project Application:
The DAS clay was rolled out to 1/4" thickness with rolling pens and the students cut out rectangular name plaques long enough to add their names. They had a choice of either carving out their names or molding them from candy letter molds and embedding them to create reliefs. They also embellished with decorative objects pressed into molds. This gave them the opportunity of being creative in their choices. Several of the students chose to copy the more creative ones which was fine as long as they participated and completed a finished piece. Two hanging holes were added at the top of their sculptures on opposite sides. Most finished before the end of the class. I brought their items home to dry safely as this clay is very fragile until dried.

Homework:
No homework was assigned because of the holiday on Monday the 13th.

Looking Forward To Week 3:
Name plaques will be returned and the students will finish them with paint, and glaze them with gloss spray. They'll add hanging cords and take home their finished sculptures.

Notes To Parents:
Classes are moving along fine and I am enjoying them greatly. It's really lots of fun and these students are truly little whizzes; much smarter than I had anticipated. This week they completed a whole project in less than an hour. They all worked hard and finished. I'll be bringing my camera to chronicle their work so they can look back and see how far they've come during the course. I think it will be interesting not only for me but for them as well to be able to follow each class, see pictures of their work, review the types of clay we use and see all of the projects completed. Progress photos will be very inspiring.