Fourth Grade Coil Pots

My fourth grade students have just finished making coil pots.  They really enjoyed this lesson and their pots came out great.  The students were given one class to practice rolling and building with coils.  Groups of four or five students created one pot together.  Some of the things I asked them to focus on were; rolling even coils, making coils the proper thickness, remembering to scratch and attach, and building a pot that was stable.  The following art class each student created their own pot with the same criteria.  They were encouraged to be as creative as they wanted as long as the pot was well built and finished in the 40 minute class.  After the pots were fired the students sketched design ideas before under glazing and glazing their pots.  We also had some fun with the pottery app on the ipads.  I talked to them about other ways to create pots out of clay and showed them someone making a bowl on the potters wheel.  The kids loved using the app to create their own piece of pottery.  It was a fun connection for them.