Art camp 3 Gourds & Pottery

As you can see it was a busy creative day for the kids. First we took an computer tour of a variety of Native American designs on pots and baskets identifying the elements of the designs--was it a person, an animal, or something else? We talked a bit about how using differing shapes of gourds and decorating them would have happened. The kids drew the designs on small gourds, scribed and stained them and accented them with markers. My teen assistant used the wood buring tool to put a small leafy vine on the side of most of the gourds for the kids. We had lots of eagles, geckos, snakes, suns and arrows.
Next we got into the clay to create pots with shell and bead decorations. The one table made cups with handles and even a double spouted "loving cup" like we saw in the slides. The older kids created bowls and baskets with lots of shell accents, while the youngest campers all started with coil pots and completed them with shells, beads, fun foam and wire accents. They really worked hard to make these their own.