My beginning ceramics students are slowly learning the basics of hand-building in hopes that soon I can let them enter a more choice-based atmosphere.  One of the basics we learned was the pinchpot.  In Art 1, my students create pinchpot monsters.  I wanted to do more than that in beginning ceramics class.  I also wanted them to continue to practice carving, which we had done in the previous unit, carved slabs.

Students created 2 pinchpots and scored/slipped them together to form a sphere-like shape.  After letting it firm up some, they were to carve, incise, and/or cut into their sphere.

Some kids spent a lot of time figuring out their designs.  Other just went for it.  Two kids added to their sphere.  But, they all learned a lot about thinking in the round and time spent in the air.  A couple commented that their carving got better, even though it was much harder to carve a round surface than it was the flat surface.

The last thing we did was glaze them.  For this I had them choose from the test tiles they had created.  They could choose from their samples or from any sample from the other students.  Luckily they all took good notes.

Here are some of the results.