Delight Air Dry Eggs with my 5th graders

It is getting close to Easter and my classroom is in full holiday swing mixed with April recycling projects!  My 5th graders have been working on recycled magazine basket weaving.  Of course, students work at different paces and a few have already completed their baskets.  What next??  Why eggs, of course.

I have an enormous box of plastic eggs that were donated a couple of years ago ("Could you use a bag of plastic eggs?  I have been weeding out"...my surprise?  the "bag" was a lawn bag FILLED with eggs!!).  I pulled out the box of eggs and let each choose one.  We added some glass beads to the inside to turn the eggs into shaker/maraca eggs.  Then came the clay...

I pulled out the Delight clay and gave each student a piece (about 1/8th of the package).  I demoed how color can be added with washable markers by dabbing the marker onto the clay.  Kneading the color into the clay will turn the normally white clay into the color chosen.  Many students chose to marbleize the color by partially mixing the color into the clay.  Others decided to cover the egg before coloring with markers or acrylic paint.  Soon snakes and coils, polka dots and pancakes of clay took over the tables.  As you can imagine, no 2 were alike!

 

I have a ton of Tandy leather stamping tools that I use with my clay students for texture as well as texture sheets and rollers.  I put everything out for the students to use to embellish their eggs. 

 

Once complete, we placed the eggs in (what else??) an egg carton to dry.  (NOTE: I used a Styrofoam  egg carton to keep the clay from sticking to the sides)

 

Super easy project!  Great for all ages and abilities.  Don't have plastic eggs??  The Delight Air Dry could also go around paper mache' eggs or ceramic eggs or create a free form egg shape from foil!