Year 2 were honoured to be introduced to sculptor, Diarmuid Bryon O’Connor last Friday morning. He was immediately able to engage all the children in a variety of activities with the melon-sized piece of clay they had in front of them. They heard the term ‘throwing’ and were thrilled to have the opportunity to do just that!

The first task was to make a coil pot from the grapefruit sized portion of clay they had taken from their original chunk. The children were required to make a long snake and then to coil it into a shape that resembled a pot.

We moved on to Diarmuid’s instructions for a pinch pot, this time taking an orange-sized piece of clay. We formed a second pot by putting our thumbs in the middle of this sphere and pinching all the way round until a pot appearance was achieved.

Diarmuid then encouraged the children to make their own sculpture using these two pots as a basis for their final piece.  They stirred up a slurry so that they could glue any parts of their model together.

Year 2 found out that their clay model will need to have time to dry out (approximately three weeks is necessary) before being fired in a kiln. Diarmuid’s mum still displays his first piece of work and it’s similar to the one that each of the children made. We took the opportunity afterwards to look at the sculpture that Diarmuid made of Peter Pan on the Great Ormond Street website.