Bangabandu Ceramic Projects: Webpage built with the pupils

'In our class we did drawings to help design a mural. I drew a seagull and a crab. They needed lots of detail. So when I drew the bird I put in lots of details like the feathers and when I drew the crab I put in all the knobbly bits on its shell.

'The mural was made in the school cookery room. I remember coming to help make the suckers on the octopus. The clay was all over the floor. When I went in it was in the process of being cut and was spread out all over the floor. You had to be careful not to tread on it otherwise your footprint would be in the clay. It needed to be kept moist so we sprayed it very often with water. We experimented using different utensils to make the octopus's suckers.

'At the end I was really suprised to see the mural on the wall because it looked so bold compared to when it just had faint outlines and was in bits on the cooking room floor. IT WAS COMPLETE!!!' Ruth (year 5 Blue)

Animal Alphabet Nonsense Poems and an 'Underwater' Mural

Coming up with the ideas, words and designs

Catherine and Maud came in to the school and pupils came up with words for the alphabet tiles.

'Children looked at information books, reference books and thesauruses, and copied out pictures of animals onto paper using black ink pen. I drew a picture of a rhinoceros'. Klara (year 6 red)

'In our classroom we drew animals from the alphabet. and everyone in our class drew them. I wanted to draw a gorilla so I got a book about mammals and started drawing my gorilla by looking at the picture on the book carefully. Once I drew it, I coloured in the gorilla and then the gorilla was finished. Ruth in my class came and told me that I was going somewhere. Then I saw my tile next to the other tiles but it was all in bits but it was joined together and on the border there was a funny sentence. Finally my gorrilla tile was finished!' Mahfuj (year 5 Blue)

'My favourite part of the project was drawing the detail of the turtle. The teachers made me look carefully at the shell of the turtle.' Joynal (year 6 Blue)

'In the class with the artists we thought about every letter of the alphabet and had to find an animal and a descriptive word for it. The first letters had to be the same. We then drew the animals doing the action.' Khalid (year 5 Blue)

'When I was drawing the alphabet mural I was very exicited because I was drawing an ostrich. We needed to find different types of animals for every letter of the alphabet. I was very good at it because I read animal books because I like animals.' Dylan (year 5 Red)

Making the clay mural and tiles

'I liked pressing in the design on the octopus and used a round object for the suckers on the tentacles. The tentacles help animals feel things.' (Mosrur year 6 Blue)

'We put some pictures on some clay and traced over them with the end of a paint brush. When we finished we pulled the design off and the pattern was on the clay. We pressed shapes into the clay to give our picture more patterns. We gathered our pictures together in clay and made a mural. It's good!' Nabila (year 5 Blue)

'My favourite part of the project was when we thought of the words for the alphabet animal nonsense poems. Then I enjoyed the way we used the different objects to make marks in the clay for the mural. When I did the project I drew the two ducks, a turtle and a star fish. The mural looks fantastic and the alphabet tiles look brilliant too!' Rafi (year 6 red)

'I enjoyed drawing my turtle and it went on the clay picture. I liked pushing the pinecone into the clay for the octopus' body.' (Ruadhan year 6 Blue)

Painting the Alphabet tiles

The children painted under-glaze colours onto the bisque fired tiles.

Pupils helped piece it all back together by looking at codes on the tiles

The results!

'I enjoyed seeing the animal mural finished because when you touched it, it felt nice. It feels rough and smooth - bumpy and textured - it felt interesting. It looked good!' James (year 6 red)

'In our underwater mural we made fish, octopus, dolphins, jellyfish, seahorses, starfish, crab, lobster, shells, turtles and an underwater sponge.' Delwar (year 5 Red)