Native American Art week at Tenbury Wells Primary School provided the challenge of producing a ceramic totem pole with year’s 5 & 6.

As part of my research, Google revealed a mass of information and facts about totem pole and why they were made – fascinating stuff about shaming bad debtors, commemorating significant occurrences and celebrating an individual or clan.
I encouraged the children to consider their own animal totem by asking a range of questions. After much fun and debate, the children created their own stylised totem in clay.

All the tiles and cladding will be fired before the end of term and stand guard at the entrance of the school’s forest school area.
Check out the school’s website: http://www.tenburyprimary.co.uk/

Yet another one! This time it was constructed at Ashton Under Hill pre-school play group. Regular visitors to our blog will know that we’ve been working closely with the group – developing their outside space to play (see blog entries Monday, 23 March 2009 & Thursday, 12 March 2009 ).

 

Family & friends of the staff and children dropped by during the day for pizza, sausage rolls and a shed load of muck spreading!

 

This bench had a distinctly modern feel – a contemporary, curved design – (I’m sure there must be an appropriate clay inspired acronym for DFS!) We all finished just in time before the heavens opened, and generously watered the grass seed we had sewn into the surface. 

The whole area looks fantastic – mud pit, mud screen, marble run, and finally a sofa. A real testament to the enthusiasm, vision and hard work of the staff, children and parents – well done Mirka and Ruth!

One of the things I really cherish about working with the staff at Evesham Nursery, is their willingness to allow me to experiment with new ideas. I’d never made a clay bread oven before, but having expressed an interest in building one, the head embraced the idea with enthusiasm. So it was I spent two fabulous spring days with the children in the Nursery’s forest school, digging earth, mixing cob, shaping bricks and generally having a messy nice time!

On day two we lit small fires in the oven to help dry it out. Whilst the oven smoked quietly, we built another fire in base camp, and smoke fired some of the pots the children had made previously on the potter’s wheel…and some people have to work for a living!

This time Jon worked with a gang of students from John Masefield High School, to produce this fantastic piece of earth furniture. It was built in situ at Ledbury Youth Centre in their magnificent garden. The sofa is planted with grass seed, which will have sprouted and spread to produce a lush turf finish- all in time for Ledbury in Bloom.

Eight fantastic ceramic trees produced by all the talented children at Marlbrook Primary School in Hereford.

 

Jon visited the school on several occasions during the spring term working with each year group to make a separate year group tree.

 

Every single child in the school produced at least two leaves and helped make creepy crawlies for the trunk sections. Bearing in mind there are 450 pupils in the school, the project generated a mammoth amount of tiles, all of which had to be individually stuck onto the specially prepared tree shaped boards. Phew!

 

The trees are going to be mounted on the wall around the school for all the children and staff to enjoy.