Teacher Appreciation Mug Gifts

Mugs thrown last Thursday

Where did the time go?  Last week, I realized with a start that 5th grade graduation was a week away and I hadn’t even started making teacher appreciation gifts yet.  Sure, I could have purchased something, but I wanted to give some of the teachers a more personalized gift.  Plus, they all know me as a clay person and might have been a little disappointed to receive something store bought.  Though, I don’t think that they expect gifts either….

So, with a week to go, I set out at warp speed to make some mugs.

Handles attached on Sunday - Bisque fired on Tuesday

With a little babying and some begging & cajoling, I added handles and bisque fired fasssssssssst – 4 days after making the mug bodies.

Whew - glazed and decal fired on Wednesday and Thursday respectively

I managed to squeeze all 5 mugs into my test kiln and got to glazing and adding decals.

My favorite mug - "math = language of the universe"

This one is my fave and is a present for Jasmine’s math teacher.  I am super proud of my daughter – she skipped 5th grade math this year and she, along with a handful of other kids at her school did the 6th grade math curriculum with “Mr. Reeves”.  One of his favorite sayings is “math is the language of the universe”.

Pretty cool...if I do say so myself

If you think about the statement, it’s true.  1 + 1 = 2 regardless if you’re in Denver or Shanghai or the planet Saturn.

For the art teacher who let me use her room every Tuesday after school for the past 2 years to teach my clay class

I can’t leave out the art teacher who I personally think has the hardest job in the school.  She only gets 45 minutes a week with each class and is constantly cleaning up and preparing for a new class.  There is no down time at all.

Look at the shrinkage between bisque and glaze fire!

I didn’t glaze all the mugs – only the ones that I absolutely needed today – last day of school.  I was pretty surprised at how much the mugs shrunk after the glaze fire.  The mugs were roughly the same size after throwing – used 1 lb of cone 6 porcelain clay.  This is another example of seeing is believing…in the Mile Hi Ceramics Catalog it does say that shrinkage is about 18%.

I used to be sad that my daughter didn't look much like me, but clearly I'm relieved she takes after her dad

But I digress.  I mentioned earlier that I am super proud of my daughter – she is a good kid and a great student.  I told her the other day that I hope she’ll stay geeky through high school – to which she responded, “I’m not a geek!”  So I rephrased, “It’s okay to be a little nerdy….”  Her response, “I’m not a nerd!”  I tried again, “It’s okay – I’m a big dork myself.”  Big smile from her, “Mom I’m a dork too.”  I remembered that she and her posse of friends were called dorks in the beginning of the year by some of the “cool kids” and in their defense, they devised an ancronym in response to those who called them dorks.

D.O.R.K. = Defense Over Rude Kids.   They weren’t called dorks for long.

Must leave to get ready for 5th grade Continuation,

Cynthia