To teach children useful creativity, first see for yourself how to sculpt figurines, flowers, and a whistle from clay; read about this natural material. Clay modeling is an exciting activity for adults and children. Thanks to him, you can make toys, utensils, develop finger dexterity and spend your leisure time interestingly.
Selection of material and its preparation for work
Pottery is one of the oldest. Until now, archaeologists find fragments of pottery, jewelry that belonged to people even during the birth of their civilization.
And now this material is one of the most accessible. It can be found on the banks of ponds, in pits, or even in your summer cottage. It is enough to dig deeper, and the coveted building material is in your hands. In nature, there is reddish and blue clay. For crafts, the first is most often used. Its pieces are poured with water for 1-2 days, then stirred to form a mass of uniform consistency.
In order to make clay figurines, flowers, dishes, ornaments, it should feel like soft plasticine to the touch. Therefore, pieces of clay for such creativity are mixed with a small amount of water. If you put a brick oven or want to coat a ready-made one, the solution should be more liquid - like thick sour cream.
Clay is thin, medium, and oily. To understand if a given one is suitable for sculpting, knead it in your hands and roll the sausage. If it does not crack and does not stick to your hands, you can create from it. If you do not know what to do with children in the summer cottage, give them softened clay, let them mold animals, people, a tea set for dolls from it. Then they will put these items in the sun, after they have completely dried, they are ready to play. But there are certain methods for giving strength to pottery, which you will soon learn about. In the meantime, we'll tell you that you can buy powder clay, dilute it with water according to the instructions and work with this mass.
Modeling techniques
Here's how to sculpt from clay using various techniques:
- Knead a piece of plastic mass in your hands. If you want to get a disk-shaped blank, roll the ball, flatten it. From such a circle, you will quickly make simple clay figures, for example, a bird. To do this, on one side of the ball at the top, pull the workpiece forward to form the beak. On the reverse side at the bottom, you need to stretch part of the clay in the opposite direction, make a tail, and on the sides - wings. It remains to put the workpiece on two small branches - the legs of a bird, and a new clay toy is ready.
- If you want to sculpt with multiple pieces, create them first. To "glue" these blanks together, moisten the adjacent parts with water and do this. You can make a chatterbox of their clay and "glue" the individual elements with it. The same solution will help get rid of cracks that appear during the drying process of the product. It is enough to lubricate them with this talker.
- If you plan to make original things from clay, you can use a toothpick, plastic cutlery. They press on an already formed, but not yet dried workpiece made of this material, an interesting pattern is obtained. You can draw patterns on them with a toothpick.
- The technology of impressions is interesting. If you cut out a seal from wood or take a finished one, press it on a clay blank, and then let the impression dry, you will have your own seal. And if the young sculptor presses his palm against the rolled clay, then he will receive its print as well. It's a great idea to leave a trace of the child's hand or leg as a souvenir, which you can look at over time, when the baby grows up.
- If you wrap a toy, a figurine with food foil, and attach the clay rolled out with a rolling pin on top, then you will have to wait a day. After that, you carefully remove it from the base, leave it to dry. After processing, the resulting figurine can be painted, and you will have a double of your favorite toy.
- You can decorate a product that has not yet been dried with beads, shells, pebbles, feathers, cone scales, etc.
As you can see, there are many interesting technologies when working with this plastic material, choose any and start creating. This lesson will help you get rid of the autumn blues and will give you a lot of joyful moments and positive emotions!
DIY clay toys
If you want such a charming octopus to live in your home, stock up on:
- clay;
- water;
- sponge;
- toothpick;
- gouache;
- with a knife;
- sandpaper;
- white gouache;
- paint;
- varnish.
Manufacturing instruction:
- If you bought powder clay, dilute it with water according to the instructions. The mass for modeling in vacuum packing is also on sale. If you have mined the clay yourself by digging it, fill it with water. When unnecessary impurities, plant roots, pebbles settle to the bottom, strain the solution through a colander or sieve and leave the mass for a day in the sun to dry out a little.
- Add a little water to the clay, knead the "dough", it should not stick to your hands.
- Pour water into a bowl to moisten your hands while working and to repair any cracks.
- Tear off a piece of clay, place it in your hands, roll it into a ball on a work surface moistened with water.
- For such a clay toy, tentacles can be made in two ways. For the first, you need to roll 12-16 sausages, sharpened at one end. On the other side, attach them to the body using water. In the second method, you need to pull out the lower part of the ball, cut it with a plastic knife into tentacles, and give them an oval shape.
- Moisten a sponge in water, moisten the surface of a clay toy, smoothing out irregularities and cracks.
- Let the workpiece dry for 24 hours, then go over the surface with fine sandpaper.
- Few people have a special kiln for firing, so give the toy strength at home. Wrapped in a plastic bag with holes, place on the hot battery.
- Cover the toy with the first coat of white gouache, let it dry, then apply the second. After it dries, cover it with yellow or other paint.
- Facial features and other small details can be sculpted at the same time as you will make the toy itself, or you can create them separately and attach with ceramic glue at this final stage.
To add strength to the product, you can wrap the clay blank in foil and put it on the fire. But the fire should not be large so that the craft does not crack. See how Filimon's toys are made from clay.
To create such funny cockerels you will need:
- clay;
- plastic knife;
- modeling board;
- water;
- gouache;
- PVA;
- acrylic paints;
- soft cloth to dry your hands.
Take a piece of clay, roll up the "sausage", divide it. For small children, kindergarten teachers or parents can help. We divide into 3 parts: the central one is the largest, the piece on the left is for the head, on the right is for the tail.
Have the child roll up the largest part, giving it the shape of a carrot, and bend it as in the photo - at an angle of 90 °. We tilt the left, thin, part - this is a blank head.
If cracks have formed, smoothen them with wet fingers. Squeeze the opposite edge of the workpiece several times to give it the shape of a disk - this is the tail. And for a scallop, let the child roll up a ball, flatten it a little, cut off half and attach clay toys to the head.
To prevent the plastic mass from sticking to the board, put a piece of paper here. Connect the parts with liquid clay called slip. To quickly prepare such a "glue", mold a bowl of clay, pour water into it. With a brush, you will combine these 2 substances, and you will get a slip for sticking together details.
Next, you need to make a beard for the clay figurine. To do this, a small ball in the form of a droplet rolls down, which must be slightly flattened with your fingers, then glued to a slip under the beak.
To make a stand for a cock, roll a cone out of a piece of clay, then insert a wooden stick inside (you can use a rod from a brush), and roll it over the working surface. You should get a conical blank, hollow inside, with walls of the same thickness.
Take this method into service, it will help to mold long skirts for dolls, bells. Place this cone on the board, flatten it slightly on top, use a slip to attach a clay toy to it.
Remove it to dry within 4-5 days. After that, it would be good to bake the toy in the oven at the maximum temperature. You can do this in a country oven.
When the workpiece has cooled down, paint it with a composition prepared by mixing gouache with PVA. You can also use acrylic paints.
If you want clay figures to also make sounds, then blind such a bird-whistle. To create it take:
- clay;
- stacks, sticks;
- water;
- sponge;
- acrylic paints.
A detailed master class with a photo will simplify the sculpting process.
- Take a piece of clay and roll it into a ball. Place your thumb inward and flatten the piece to form a wide-edged plate.
- Without taking it off your finger, wrap it around it. Then remove from it and join the edges so that there is an inner hole.
- Wet your fingers in water, smooth the outer surface of the toy with them.
- Cut a hole in the tail with a knife. Insert a stick into it, cover it with a clay patch.
- At this stage, you need to check the toy by whistling into the hole made. The pitch of the notes can be adjusted by making it larger or smaller. To be able to blow out various notes, while extracting music, poke a small through hole from the sides.
- Moving on to smaller details. Sculpt the eyes, beak, crest, paws. Stack the pattern on the wings.
- Soak a sponge in water, wring it out, and run it over the surface of the toy to smooth out roughness and unevenness.
- Let the whistle dry for 4 hours, after which it is placed in an oven for firing, where it will remain for 8 hours at 800 °.
The whistle is ready.
For the famous Dymkovo clay toy, bright colors were traditionally used, which were applied to a white background. They were made with eggs and milk. Now craftswomen replace such "home" paints with acrylics.
But the Kostroma cockerels are decorated with glaze. First, a molded clay figurine is fired for the first time at 200 ° for an hour. After that, the glaze is applied and sent back to the oven, but for several hours.
How to make clay flowers?
Modeling helps to develop not only healthy children, but also those with health problems. The master class presented below contributes to the rehabilitation of children with diseases of the musculoskeletal system.
To mold a clay flower, first we will make some petals for it. Let the child roll a sausage out of this natural material, cut it into equal pieces with a plastic knife. Then they need to be rolled into a ball and flattened with your fingers.
To make it easier for the child, first draw a flower on a piece of paper, let him lay out the petals on the drawing. The core of the flower is also made from a "cake", it must be lubricated with a slip (liquid clay) and glued to the center of the flower. It can be decorated by applying a mesh, dots.
Next, you need to mold the petals, then dry and paint the blanks. It remains to place them on the panel and attach. To do this, have the children paste over a sheet of cardboard with a cloth. They, or adults, will make 2 cuts in the upper part of the panel, pass a thin satin linen through them, tie its ends in order to then hang the picture.
In the meantime, lay out its elements, let the adults attach them with a glue gun. Children will assemble the picture with PVA glue.
After learning this simple technique, you will show children how to make clay flowers, various figures. You can make more complex samples yourself and get pleasure from creativity.
We suggest you watch the following videos to expand your knowledge in this area.
