grade prep/1 at St John's Primary school make plaques

A late posting but I just found these great photos on my camera. The prep/1 students from St Johns made ceramic plaques. They are just once fired (bisque) and decorated with coloured slips and alice blue underglaze. Most children made them in low relief by adding clay with slip. Pretty cool work kids!

Wave of Fish Wall at Altona North Early Childhood Centre

This ceramic mural acknowledges the traditional owners of the Land, the Yulukit Wilum People of the Boonwarrung Language Group. The mural is of a big wave that contains words and native fish made out of clay by the 3 year old and four year old children of the early childhood centre in 2012.

The ceramic mural was assembled by community artist Debbie Qadri. The words and spelling for the text were sought from the Boonwarrung Elder Aunty Carolyn, who generously helped us.

The text reads: We'd like to pay our respects to the Yulukit Wilum of the Boonwarrung language group, the Ancestors of the land on which we stand. We also pay our respects to our Ancestors and to our Elders past and present. Womin djeka mirum bikk bikk narm derp borphen uther wilum. Welcome to our beautiful home, land of the great bay. Thankyou to Aunty Caroline for giving us the correct words.

Here are some details of the native fish that the pre-school children made from clay.

more details of this project can be seen at: http://waveoffishwall.blogspot.com.au/

Scarecrow Mural at Auburn South Pre-school

I worked with the 3 and 4 year old children at Auburn South Pre-school to make a scarecrow mural for their vegie garden called "Dot's Patch". The scarecrow is also the pre-school's logo, on the children's hats and shirts etc. The children helped me to make all of the ceramic parts except for the face, hat and bird. They squeezed clay straw out of a garlic press, rolled clay onto cabbage leaves, made tiny beads for the sunflowers centres and painted the clay with special underglazes. more more photos of the making of the mural see the full blog: http://auburnsouthscarecrow.blogspot.com.au/ here are some photos of the final work