The relaxing effects of clay.Pottery is considered a messy activity. That is true; after all, it is a natural material from the earth. Consider a day out in the garden or on the beach. Few things can satisfy human well-being like an opportunity in nature and not to worry about appearances. This can be very relaxing. Cleaning up the mess may be a reluctant activity, but helps to develop a sense of hygiene and eventually a satisfactory experience in children. A great example is hand washing before a meal is served, which helps enforce what we are drilling into our children all the time. The natural character of clay can have a similar effect on any child; its relaxing and calming effects are instrumental in attention span development.
Early development of skills in young childrenClay handled in its most basic way, often presented as a mud puddle in the garden, benefits children from a very young age. It is a combination of learning experiences that all begin to happen at the same time. They find out clay is malleable. By rolling, pinching, and poking clay, students develop hand-eye coordination. Add to that tactile exploration and children get early sensory experiences. They begin to develop spatial relationships, receive their first geometry lesson, and are confronted with their first cause-and-effect principles. As soon as a child touches clay, their observation outside their normal protected world begins to develop. The clay is wet and cold, makes squishy sounds, smells like mud, and then....is so much fun! It may have a sandy or slippery texture that may be an unpleasant experience at first, but once they find out that messy is good, they want to explore it. Play with clay allows for learning on the most basic level with no external interference. When a child is relaxed, they are open to information. The next step is clean-up, which addresses discipline and sequencing of events; more layers of skills are added to the learning curve. Developing motor skills
Handling clay is a physical activity that helps to develop small and large motor skills in kids. Larger muscles learn to be controlled when a ball of clay requires slamming and pressing down. To control those larger muscles, they sometimes have to get up and come with force down on the clay. Smaller motor skills come into play when their fingertips attach and smooth out small areas where they join one piece of clay to another. When older students prepare clay to work on a pottery wheel, the wedging process of clay helps to develop large motor skills further, while wheel work helps to refine small motor skills. The handling of pottery tools teaches students how to have more control over their motor skills. With pottery tools students must develop a depth perception of the thickness of a piece of clay and how to control the tools to prevent mistakes. Clay is soft when kids work with it, very different from paper. It is easy to poke a hole right through the clay. Drawing a line in clay, or slicing into it, provides a certain degree of resistance. This resistance teaches students to gain a different type of control. The beauty of it all is that mistakes can be fixed. Planning and Solving mistakes.Mistakes with tools happen easily but clay provides opportunities for repair which adds another layer of learning; to fix mistakes easily, adding another layer where they gain confidence. Therefore they learn from a very young age not to be scared of making mistakes, since there is a solution: make a plan and solve the problem by experience. There are few things that makes our children so proud as when they can say the did something all by themselves.
Working with clay is therapy.Clay can be therapy for students of all ages. For example, a 6-year-old kid who struggles to form letters and numbers correctly and who cannot write consistently on lines on paper, may be frustrated with a low self-esteem, which may spiral deeper into a lack of cognitive receptiveness. Soft, responsive, clay is very appealing to children who struggle with control over a pencil and writing. Such children will gain confidence as they begin to feel that they can move the clay in any direction that their hands command. They can tear it apart, squish it back together, and slam it back and forth, using tools to make marks, slice it, and add it back together. Not only does it strengthens those motor skills, but it takes the frustration and the sense of failure away. Imagine how they can tell that to each other and become proud of their successes. So mesmerized by this funny material, they begin to realize that they can manipulate clay and have control over it. That leads to a rise in their self-esteem and now they begin to plan what they want to do. They begin to discover what they can do with the clay and soon, they begin to succeed. It is never too late to introduce children to clay. Anxiety and other related issues dissolve when they explore clay and begin to see what they can achieve with it. Pottery in schools helps to develop the whole child.While any other clay will be useful, pottery clay has the potential to benefit students in many more areas than what is discussed in this blog post. Antoinette will discuss how pottery clay affects imagination, cognitive development, planning, problem-solving skills, language, communication and social skills, attention span development, and the calming effects of clay in a follow-up blog post All and all this is an extensive topic, suitable for arts integration and very worthy for any teacher to take notice of and explore for their students.
In the series of images above, Jaydin planned this sculpture, using wheel thrown and hand built elements and assembled it together into one sculpture over several days. He had to test and add new pieces, broke parts away and reorganize the elements until he was happy with the end results. In some instances we had to hold our breaths, experience disappointments and took on new challenges. The end result was well within what could be expected from a 10 year old student. He was fortunate that he had Antoinette's direct and full attention, but imagine a class group all working on a sculptural project like this. Not only will they be able to plan, but they will be able to communicate and encourage each other. They will build confidence and perseverance among many other skills that will be discussed in a next blog post about using pottery clay for arts integration in schools. Antoinette is certified as a Teaching Roster Artist and is available to help teachers to use real pottery clay in their school classroom as an approach to teaching. Through Arts Integration she collaborate with K12 teachers to give their students a better understanding of any class subject. Antoinette uses the creative process of clay to connect with subject areas in schools.
Paperclay is her preferred material, because it can be used in any school as an artform, regardless of the availability of a pottery kiln. The objective is to keep building and developing the whole child whether it is in or outside of the classroom.
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An Approach to learning.There are at least 8 ways learners process and retain information. The traditional way of teaching in schools often does not encourage all the students to use their best learning skills. Unless the teacher is equipped with extra time and abilities to let students learn in ways that suit their unique personality traits, some of them may stay behind, and feel incompetent, incapable, and unintelligent. This often affects their well-being and easily leads to behavioral problems. Children who feel smart and competent are eager to learn and feel happy and successful among their peers. They will embrace all opportunities and work their way through challenges. The discouraged student will give up. In this blog post, I will use clay activities to explore and discuss an approach to learning; how it benefits learning strategies on various levels and ages, and how teachers can introduce pottery to students, without the need for a pottery studio. I will begin to discuss the benefits of integrating pottery into early childhood development and how clay activities assist in their development. . Let's back up: how is clay beneficial?
When I first started doing pottery, I was strictly attracted to the material; the holistic nature of working with clay, and the challenges of holding a fired pottery object in my hands. I did not have any idea of how healing and beneficial this medium can be for any person. Children were always attracted to my studio. While growing up, my own 3 girls were around me all day long, pounding, poking, rolling, and building with clay. Their friends joined the fun and they were busy for hours without me having to watch over their shoulders. As the years passed, I learned more from working and teaching pottery classes than I ever thought possible and it turned out to be like a termite nest; what is seen on the surface and what goes on below, are 2 completely different things. Pottery draws people in. It captivates and mesmerizes them. The more a student creates clay objects, the more the clay helps to develop their skills as they learn to be in control of the clay. They learn to communicate better, to self-express better, to solve problems, and in the process build self-esteem. Pottery activities are the one thing that keeps building back to the person manipulating it, making it a perfect tool to integrate into schools. Today, my knowledge and experiences about the benefits of students learning through clay activity are concrete and widely backed by research. Pottery as a visual arts solution for schools.
There are a wide variety of artistic activities benefiting children and their learning abilities. Most are suitable to incorporate in the classroom and each of them can encourage children to find their preferred way of learning. Pottery is a visual art activity. Students can begin to play with clay from a very early age. As soon as a child understands not to put clay in his or her mouth or throw it around, they are ready to discover clay. Having the potential to create 2 and 3-dimensional art with this shapeable material, makes it more versatile than many other types of visual arts. Spatial relationships, geometry, and cause-and-effect principles become very early on natural learning curves for these young kids. Playdough and similar commercial sculpting mediums are colorful and attractive to children. In contrast, pottery clay is an unattractive brown or gray, which at first may appear to be a disadvantage, until one realizes that choice-making is a crucial part of the growing process. Pottery clay needs ceramic stains and glazes or acrylic paints to add color in the final finished product. The ability for students to have control over color, adds a diversity component to pottery clay, which is often suppressed in the cookie-cutter world that we live in. It has an open-ended character providing students with a 3-dimensional canvas with permanent qualities. Students who enjoy clay at an early age will be able to create permanent pottery work as they get older, holding the promise of self-worth, a strong element in learning success.
The use of Paperclay is a cheap alternative to learning arts in schoolsDue to budget cuts, teachers often work with minimal artistic materials. Pottery clay is cheap and unfired pottery clay can be recycled multiple times. The same ball of clay can be used repetitively, as long as it is kept soft with water, stays uncontaminated, and rests in plastic after it is being used. In some areas, especially Mississippi, clay can be dug up from the earth, adding another learning opportunity for, especially older kids. Few art mediums stimulate growth and skill in children in the way that clay does. Maintaining and reclaiming used clay correctly makes it one of the cheapest mediums to introduce into the school classroom. Teachers are often under the impression that they need a pottery studio set up, and access to a kiln in the school to do pottery with students, while all that is needed are washable tables, water buckets, clay, found objects that may serve as tools, and a teacher willing to let students play and explore clay. Paperclay is a clay medium widely used among potters. The added value of this medium is that it does not have the same technical and scientific demands that other pottery clays have. The paper fibers provide added strength during the making and its forgiving qualities allow students to focus on the project. Although it is regular pottery clay, the added paper, makes it a medium suitable to add wet to dry clay, and allows for fixing mistakes after it has been through the kiln. It can be fired to become true pottery objects, but it has tremendous value in a school classroom because it can stay unfired. Paperclay is strong enough to be painted with acrylic paints and acrylic sealers once the student sculptures are dried. It will last as long as it stays protected from water. These sculptures, painted colorfully, provide opportunities to explore and integrate art with class subjects. Compared to artificial modeling clay materials, real pottery clay has endless learning opportunities for students of all age
Antoinette is available to assist schools to start their own clay program, regardless of access to a pottery kiln or not. Through arts integrated lessons Antoinette can help to bridge the visual arts with the all subject areas. let her know where your needs are and with your collaboration she will help you to develop an approach to teaching that will benefit your students. Also see the article about paperclay mixing
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