Creation Station: Clay Bowls
Participants will gain exposure to the similarities among a wide variety of historical cultures, marvel at human ingenuity and creativity, and feel connected as they join a long tradition of human creativity by making their own clay bowl!
Full Program Description
Craft and create with us! We’ll provide an idea and supplies; then you create your own masterpiece. take part in an ancient worldwide practice by making a decorative air-dry clay bowl, perfect for gift-giving or holding your own tiny trinkets.
Supplies
- air dry clay (we estimated three 1-oz. packets per person, but you could do less)
- paper bowls or mini pie tins for molding the clay into a bowl shape
- dried flowers (optional)
- acrylic paint markers (optional), or use other colors of clay to create inlaid-clay patterns
- gift boxes, tissue paper, and ribbons for wrapping (optional)
- tools for clay such as rolling pins
- parchment paper
- mod podge separated into mini take-home cups (optional)
- pop-up sponges, cut into small squares to take home (optional)
- printed instruction/scratch-off sheets and scratch-off stickers (3/4″ squares)
- something to scratch off with (I used the ends of golf pencils)
Assets
3 pages abridged instructions for the table (we use 3-sided acrylic holders) | printable 8.5″ x 11″ pdf | copy & edit in Canva
half-page instructions and scratch-off ancient bowls activity | printable 8.5″ x 11″ pdf | copy & edit in Canva | This printable probably would be better on a full sheet of paper, but I was originally trying to make it small and bookmark-sized. You could resize the document in Canva.
Instructions
- This was a drop-in program with a revolving door of people coming and going.
- When a new group arrived, I first handed them the side of the instruction sheet with the scratch-off activity. “To get you started, get inspired by some ancient clay bowls from around the world. When you’re done, come back and we’ll get you set up with your materials.”
- If it was a group with young children, I skipped giving them the scratch-off sheet until the end of the activity so they could get started on the hands-on part right away.
- “Hi! Today we are making clay bowls. Here are a couple of examples, but you can make it however you like! You can either roll the dough out to make it flat, or make it into a long snake to make a coiled bowl, or find a new way to make one. Whenever you’re working with the clay, keep it on the parchment paper so it doesn’t stick to the table. When you’re ready to make the bowl shape, put the parchment paper inside the bowl – you’re going to use a bowl to make the bowl – so they clay won’t stick to the paper bowl. Start with 3 packets of clay – you can mix the colors if you like – and you can always come back to get more.”
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