This is a 7th grade clay project I did at my student teaching placement at Forest Park Middleschool! Students will design and sculpt a Whimsical Kiln Guardian — a small clay figure inspired by ancient kiln gods, intended to “watch over” the class kiln. This project blends historical context with personal creativity and technical clay skills. Students will learn about cultural traditions, explore textures, build hollow forms, and experiment with color through underglaze and glaze application.

This project was definitely hard for me, as someone who does not have much ceramic experience, as I only took one college ceramics class. Reminding myself of all the different clay contruction techniques took a second! It definitley took the kids a lot longer then I thought to complete this project, and they had to come in for lunch to work on it!

Below is some photos of them and their work, as well as a link to the lesson plan!