Productive Weekend in the Studio

I had quite a week. To start the week my computer's hard drive died. Then, while traveling across the state, my car died. After being stranded for almost two days, I was relieved to finally get back home to my daughter. To release my stress I spent most of my weekend in the studio. Today, I threw a dozen plates and finished carving the vase pictured below. The carving took me about about ten hours to finish.

passing the time while testing

At my school, the entire month of April is going to be effected by PSSA testing. My coworkers and I often refer to the month of April as the “lost month”. Unfortunately most of my classroom lessons and my students’ projects will come to a grinding halt for the next three weeks. I will have to proctor tests for 2-3 hours on some days. Furthermore my ceramics classroom has been deemed unconducive for testing, so I will have to proctor tests in different classrooms throughout my school. I will need to be attentive to the needs of the students testing, but I also need to come up with an activity to occupy my time. So, during testing I will bring with me 1-2 pounds of clay and sculpt small critters like this alligator: