Kindergartners Make Marvelous Mother’s Day Pendants

An elementary art teacher asked me to help with a Mother’s Day project for her Kindergarten class. She wanted heart shaped cookie cutters of a specific size for cutting out clay tiles. I searched Thingiverse and found a number of options but ended up selecting Valentine’s Day Heart Shaped Cookie Cutter by user Dimwit-Dave. I scaled the cookie cutters in Cura and 3D printed it on an Ultimaker 2 using a 0.8mm nozzle.

The class objective was for students to learn about texture. The lesson started with a texture hunt with students searching for different textures around the room.

The students then added textures to clay slabs with texture plates. Next the students cut out heart shaped tiles in the clay with the 3D printed cookie cutters.

The students carefully removed the clay tiles from the cookie cutter then used a straw to poke a hole in the tile to create a pendant.

The teacher carefully scribed the student names on the backs of the completed pendants.
The pendants were then glazed and fired in a kiln.

An assistant added ribbon to the pendants to create necklaces. The Kindergarteners gave the necklaces to their Mothers at a special Mother’s Day event in class. There were a number of handmade gifts and classroom projects presented but the heart necklaces received the warmest response.

This project is a great example of how 3D printed objects can be used as classroom tools rather than being the finished product. An extension of this project would be to have students design their own texture plates.

Josh Burker has an excellent example of the use of 3D printed tools in his  blog post on 3D Printed TurtleArt Stamps for Clay Tiles.

Have you used 3D printed objects as tools in the classroom? Share your ideas in the comments or contact me on Twitter @DesignMakeTeach.