A Tale of Two Turkeys: Turkey #1 Clay Plates

We have been really busy at school. Thanksgiving is in 10 days so we are trying to get all our seasonal arts and crafts projects finished.

Grade 1 did these adorable Turkey plates this year. I will give the how to.....if you don't have access to a kiln stay tuned for the next post...Grade 4 made salt dough turkeys and I'll be posting that tutorial on Monday.

Materials Required:

clay

small chinet plates

plastic cling wrap

water

rolling pin

skewer or dull knife

glazes in a variety of colors
kiln

Before you get started wrap your chinet plate in cling wrap.

Cut off a slice from your clay and roll out to 1/2 an inch thick.

Turn the plate onto the clay and cut around it with a skewer or dull knife.

Take away the excess leaving your round.

You can place this into your cling wrapped plate for the moment. For Grade 1 I did the prep for them up to this point.

When the student was ready with an art smock on we took the round out of the plate and had them press their hand into the clay as hard as they could.

I then made the impression deeper following the outline of their hand print.

Place the round back into the cling wrapped plate.

I then got them to roll a small ball of clay and smoosh it flat.

We attached this to the palm area with some scratching and water to fuse it to the main plate.

I then had them make two eye balls and a beak as well as to scratch in their name and I put in the year.

I also had them put some decorative stamping along the rim of the plate.

Leave plates loosely draped to dry. After 5 days remove the drape. Carefully turn out each plate, remove the cling wrap and then put clay plate back into the chinet plate for further drying.


When the clay is no longer cold to the touch bisque fire in kiln.

When the plates had cooled the students glazed their plates. I asked them to paint each of the the feathers (fingers) a different color.

Give them a 2nd and 3rd coat if you can.

Let the glaze dry and then glaze fire in the kiln.

We did pretty good..... we had one plate break but it's a clean break and I will glue it together.

That's it. My goal this year is to do ceramics with every kid in the school. So we are off to a good start.

I think the plates turned out adorable and a good effort from Grade 1.

Stay tuned for Turkey #2 on Monday. Made from salt dough it can be completed faster than this project and does not require a kiln.

see you then