Letters: Clay

What We Did

We looked at different clay art pieces and had a group discussion about the elements and principles that we saw. After we had our discussion we were shown how to use clay. My classmate showed us how to cut the clay off of the block and the sizes we needed. We then had to get all of the air bubbles out of the block so we would roll it, slam it down, and fold it over and over again. Then we had to roll out our clay to be as thick as the thickness of our pinky. I then cut out the letter H from mine because my name starts with H. She had us pick 3 symbols about ourself. I chose mountains for hiking, the tree for my love for the environment, and a baseball because I am trying to attend all 30 stadiums in my lifetime. I put the Seattle Mariners symbol because it is my favorite baseball team. 

 Extension Activity

I would do a phonics activity after the students made their letters. We could talk about the phonemes of different graphemes as a class. For example if someone in the class had a letter B I would hold it up and say "class what sound does the letter B make?" and have all of them respond together. We could even do digraphs as well. I could find a T and an H and hold them up together and say "class what sound does Th make?" and have them respond. We could do this with all of the different letters that the students chose to use. They could then write 3 words that start with the same grapheme and phoneme correspondence.