Clay Coil Hearts! and Reconstituting Clay!

Here's a clay lesson I recently created for my second graders! I created a video to share the process with them and thought I'd share it with you too. Here you go:

I did change things up from the video after working with the kids...we made the heart all in one sitting. That's right, 30 minutes! We hustled! Mostly because when I did try to have them wrap the clay coils up in a plate, they were dried and too brittle the next time. The key is that the clay needs to be super soft for the kids to work with. So passing that along to you!

This lesson could easily be done with both air dry and kiln fire clay. We used kiln fire. Once fired, I will dip all of the pieces in diluted India ink, covering the piece entirely. The ink dries quickly. Then I'll pass the piece back to my students and they will use craft store metallic acrylic paints to add the color. I added holes at the top so we could hang these. I may even have them add beads to the hanger. 

And in case your clay dried out before you could use it last year, I created a video on how to reconstitute that old clay. I did this process with clay that was two years old! Not fun at all...but it can be done and it's good to know when you are in need. I hope it helps!

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