Monday, July 8, 2013

Merit Badge Monday: Pottery

A friend, Cristi, over at Through the Calm and Through the Storm asked me to make this a link-up post, so I am going to do that. It'd be great to see some other ideas of how people are incorporating various Scouting activities into their lives!

A couple of the pieces done on the wheel
This week, I'm talking about the Pottery Merit Badge, as all three of my Boy Scouts just earned that one.  Our council is doing a monthly Saturday event, and in June, it happened at the Fine Arts Center. The kids could choose from Art, Sculpture, or Pottery.

Thomas, with his interest in Archaeology, wanted to do the pottery one, and his brothers thought it sounded fun as well.

The piece Thomas did on the wheel
This merit badge involves reading a bunch about the history of pottery and ceramics, and learning a bit about how it is used today.  That is stuff we did here before the class.  In class (six hours), they got dirty.  Really dirty.

They played with clay, and lots of it.

They had to work with various techniques, and each kid created a number of different pieces.  Those pieces were fired, and the kids got to come back for a couple of hours the next Saturday to glaze their pieces.  They were fired again, and just this past week, we were able to go pick up the finished work.


Connor's big piece, a T-Rex
Thomas is talented.  The other boys did a good job too.

The "big" project involved making a slab pot, topped with coils.  Then a pinch-pot lid was created, with a sculpted animal.

I love that the kids had the chance to spend 10-12 hours learning about pottery and doing pottery, and two of my kids are content.  One wants to find a way to pursue this further.  And that is the idea behind these merit badges... to learn a bit and maybe discover a new hobby, interest, or career path...





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