Lessons in clay

Last week we decided it was finally time to clean out the pottery room in the basement so the whole family could go down and spend time there together without too many hazards. We talked about doing it early in the summer so we could have a cool place to go when the house got hot. Needless to say it took us a while to actually do it.
As a distraction to Elsa, we gave her some clay to play with. She has only had the privilege of joining me in the basement to play with clay a dozen times or so. We normally sculpt with some oil based clay at our dining room table. This is the first time she had free reign on the water bucket. She quite enjoyed it.




Tonight Elsa joined me in the basement for some more fun while Audra went to the store. She sculpted a dolphin, a snake, and a boy (the boy was a snake until she decided it was a boy). I managed to throw one pot. Elsa helped me a little bit at the end. Then she got the chance to make her own pot on the wheel. She did a GREAT job. I held her hands under mine for the first few steps. Once we had a cylinder I let her take over completely. She had a very gentle touch. I expected it to be thrown off in less than a minute. She took some tools and made some lines in it. She really wanted to make a "snake" like I did when I trimmed up the bottom. She also made some spirally holes in the bottom. Amazingly she never crashed it. Too bad our photographer was at the store! We didn't get any pictures. We will have to take some of the final product.

p.s. Josh and Brianne-take a close look at the shirt Elsa has on. Go Beavers!