Improvements

So today I got to try both my "birdcage" and my clay again, fresh. I led the class in a different, slightly more circuitous route around the birdcage today. I had them cut out the circle - which they all did successfully - collected the scissors, and had them fold the circle. Then I passed out the bird they drew last week, and the markers, and allowed them to color their birds while I went from table to table, drawing the lines they would cut to make the circle stretch, and explaining that they had to stop where the line did. A few students still didn't get things quite right, but most of them did. Time is still a problem - forty minutes is just not enough! A handful of students actually got the cage glued on over the bird, but that was it. What I have left to do with them is too little for one period, but takes up enough time that starting something new is going to be tricky.

The clay went pretty well today. I remembered the dishtowels that I was going to bring yesterday, and thus managed to keep the tables a little cleaner than they would be otherwise. The cookie cutters continued to be a godsend. And the kids...well, they were just SO excited about this project. One of the boys in the class' mother teaches upper primary French, and she came in to introduce herself and tell me how excited he was to come to art this week - he'd been collecting different textures to use and had his own cookie cutters (he didn't have a hexagon one, like he'd planned to use, and he was so intent on following the plan he made in his homework that I gave him one of the plastic knives that so dismally failed yesterday, and traced a hexagon on the clay for him to cut out). One of our German students who hasn't spoken much English yet, at least to me, was asking me questions and using all the words he could. Their teacher came in and took pictures, too. It was just a really good atmosphere, and the project worked well, and at the end of the period it was like, oh, yeah, this is why we do clay. Not because we're a bunch of masochists but because the kids just LOVE it!