Friday, April 12, 2013
Prepping Clay - Oh Yeah!
This morning I was looking forward to the clay projects but ...yes.....really...I planned them back to back! How?!? What happened? Oh...well it happened. Okay, I wanted to prep for both I started cutting and cutting but I needed to separate them for ease of passing them out ...here's what I came up with
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15 comments:
lovely I should do this! I usually cut with the kids right in the room! They pass it out pretty quickly. But still this would be better if i had the time.
What a great idea!
Does the cardboard plate pull out too much moisture from the clay?
It's usually cut during planning time and then passed out about 2 hours later....some stuck together but not many
I usually cut it and put it in individual plastic bags for each student. Then when they are working on a piece and haven't finished they already have the bag to cover their clay at the end of the class. Saves time and if you are feeling really frisky you can toss the clay to the kids!
I use wax paper to separate slabs.
I pre-cut slabs with a strip of plastic garbage bag accordian-folded between them. Works well when you have little time during and/or between classes.
I love prepping like this EXCEPT the clay I haven't been wedging before I cut it. It works great until the slab projects start to dry out. I keep them in these collage trays made out of egg carton type paper, which slows the drying down a bit, but cracking/checking still happens. The 3rd-grade projects are decoratively carved and glazed frames while the 4th graders make a bas-relief with decorative frames.
My question to you is: Did you wedge your slabs? Did you use a slab concept project? If so, did they crack like mine?
I got pieces that cracked while drying too when I used a similar method of stacking the clay between styrofoam plates. The class that cracked the worst was the ones I had stacked really high. The ones that were in several smaller stacks did not crack in the center. I believe it was a combination of the clay not being wedged and the pressure from the pieces at the bottom of the stack.
The cracking you guys described sounds like it comes from stacking while drying. It's not a good idea to stack clay while drying because it cannot dry evenly. If clay cannot dry evenly, it is prone to cracking. When stacked, the centers of the slabs dry slower than the edges.
Prep time? What is that? The giant cheese slicer is a must have! It will slice slabs or cut up chunks. Cut and hand directly to the students as they walk in. Scraps of fabric for the table. It would be lovely to have an aid to make sure names get on every piece. Pass out pieces of straws to make holes in order to hang a finish project. Cover rolling pins with a thin sock so clay won’t stick. Cover. Pop cans with a thin sock to use as a mold for slab built mugs. Pull out of mug for the next class.
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I had slabs cracked that were never stacked. I think it was the clay and it needs to be wedged first
I am using sandwich bags that I just place between the slabs (I don't put them in the bags - I just layer them and that works really well - then I stack them in a much larger bag. When I pass out the clay, I simply save the baggies for the next batch of clay. This way the 'slices' stay moist and if I'm worried about them, I'll scrunch up a wet paper towel and throw it in when I bleed the air from the big bag. Since we've renovated, the boxes of clay got hard YOWSERS!!!!! I've had to hammer my screwdriver into each block, fill the holes with water and seal the blocks back up. I've let them set but I turned the bags each day for better wetness dispersement. It's been a pain with 25lb bags but you gotta do what you gotta do. They also lost the handle to my slab roller :( :( :( Good luck out there!
The sandwich bags are a great idea!! I have used plates and paper as separators but it does dry the clay out a little. I hear you with the 25pound clay bags that dry out! I myself am trying to rejuvenate some bags that have gone quite dry- so dry I couldn’t poke holes in it! But after soaking and turning for weeks, it is looking good! There is hope and willpower, and I don’t want to be wasteful.
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