Year 3 Perfect pottery skills!

Topic

This week year 3 have been getting messy with clay (sorry parents, we promise they wore aprons!) and creating their own Roman pottery. 

Like any great artist:

1. We researched all about pottery, why the Romans used it and why it became so popular in Britain
2. Explored different types of pottery, patterns, shapes and designs and how these could be used to inspire us.
3. Used all of our knowledge to inspire and help us to come up with our own designs.
4. Practiced how to roll, shape and mould the clay.
5. And finally we got onto making!

We were particularly interested in two pot designs, these were called "Pinch Pots" and "Coil Pots". 

Pinch Pots
These were the easier pot to create, we moulded the clay into a ball and stuck our thumbs halfway into the ball. We then used a hand shape (that we called a ducks beak) to shape the clay into a small pot. We think they turned out great and we even managed to put some designs on the outside!

Coil Pots
These we found a bit more fiddly and required us to use a lot more skill and planning to help us shape our pots. Once again we moulded our clay into a ball and then separated this into four equal balls. One of these became our base and the rest we rolled into equal length and width sausage shaped pieces that formed the coils around our pots. Some of us even managed to squeeze in a handle. Great work Year 3!