Pottery as a visual arts activity for schools

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. 

Beta club students are painting their mugs which reflects the Mississippi culture.

Young students are engaged in learning which characteristics distincts a chicken from a snow owl.

Early development of skills in young children

​Clay 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

The clay may be a boring grey color, but the child have a vivid imagination that needs further development.

Developing small motor skills. That little finger must work just right to smooth out that area.

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. ​

Developing fine motor skills.

Planning and executing a project is a strong part of the learning curve. Students who can break down the elements of a story has a better understanding of where to go next.

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.  

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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. 

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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.