My children are obsessed with Peppa Pig and I think that they would watch it all day if I let them. Fortunately I do not however the reason why I bring this up is because in one episode Peppa is at her friend Zoe Zebra’s house and they want to make a tea set. The play clay won’t work and so they end up making pottery. Of course my children wanted to do exactly the same and nagged me to buy them some until I actually remembered to do so.
Apart from satisfying my children’s Peppa Pig obsession, playing with clay is a fantastic learning tool. The rolling, pushing, squeezing, pinching and shaping of the clay helps develop the muscles in their hands and arms and forming shapes helps work on their fine motor skills. Feeling the texture and temperature of clay is also fantastic sensory input although the cold, slippery wet clay did take some getting used to by my youngest daughter.
Not too sure about this.
Once the girls had gotten used to the feel of the clay they rolled out their balls of clay into long snakes and then spiraled them round to make a cup shape. We then rolled a smaller sausage for a handle and just like that we had two cups. The two cups of course belonged to me and my eldest daughter, my 2 year old make her own flat version of a cup.
Rolling out our snakes.
This little one still isn’t convinced but her sister is doing it so it can’t be all bad.
Shaping our tea cups.
A flat version of the tea cup.
We had some left over clay and so we decided to make some little clay bunnies from an easter chocolate mold I had. It was great watch them really pushing the clay in with their little fingers.
The great thing about the clay that I found is that it is air dry clay and didn’t require any baking in a kiln so once we were done we put them in a dry place to harden.
The aftermath.
After a few days when we were sure they had dried completely we set up their paints and made them look pretty.
Ready for painting (sadly the flat tea cup didn’t survive).
I was roped in to painting some bunnies.
Some very interestingly painted clay creations.
Unfortunately we didn’t ensure that the cups were watertight and so our first tea party ended up in disaster… I think some more practice is definitely in order!