Our Pottery Wheel

Many schools are excited about providing their students with the opportunity to work on our portable pottery wheel. This service is offered in our regular in-school workshop and our Artist in Residence program. If a class is booked for the creation of curriculum projects and wheel work, then two instructors are present; one to lead and clay making and one to lead with the pottery wheel work. The class will begin with project instruction the regular pottery wheel demonstration and the students will then start the curriculum project. Each student will temporarily stop their work so that s/he can create a second clay project on the wheel. Our instructors will help them to center the clay, shape the piece and then apply a slip glaze to the spinning clay work. Each piece will be fired in our kilns and returned to the students with a “food safe” gloss finish.

Clay for Kids is proud of the fact that we manufacture our own pottery wheel in Alberta. We always believed that a pottery wheel demonstration was essential to the student learning experience and experimented with commercial pottery wheels for several years. However, none of these wheels were rugged enough to with-stand the daily transportation and handling by our instructors. Also, we wanted to provide the opportunity for students to work on the wheel. Although our instructors could work on the commercial wheels, they were generally not suitable for children.

Our pottery wheels are designed and assembled by qualified technologists and tradesmen. The pottery wheel assembly has been tested by the Canadian Standards Association and is CSA approved. The wheel is small enough to be carried by our instructors but is still stable while spinning during operation. The diameter of the aluminum wheelhead is ideal for the smaller hands of children but is still suitable for adults. The wheelhead is “bowl shaped” to minimize splatter while the wheel is spinning as this is a concern in a crowded classroom. The speed of rotation is fixed at a rate that is most suited for children based our 30 years of experience.