The fifth-grade students in Mrs. Hoddick's and Mr. Black's classes are dedicating their efforts to the study and creation of Native American pottery. The unit is an extension of the social studies curriculum.

Students have examined pottery from various ancient and modern groups such as the Anasazi, Hohoham, Mogollon, Acoma, Navajo, and Hopi people, among others. The students chose a style of vessel to recreate.

The children are recreating these pieces in the traditional manner. They use hand- and coil-building techniques, stones to burnish (or polish) the unfired clay, and a lot of patience. Some students described a strong respect they now have for the early Americans' slow and painstaking work. Many students were surprised at how challenging it is to build a strong clay piece. Most children worked through the structural difficulties of the clay falling down, drooping, cracking, or hardening. The students are learning to "listen" to the clay, as it tells them what it needs, its limitations, and when to stop. Students found that they could only build the coils to a certain height before they started to droop, and the clay needed a time to rest before it could support any further weight.

Once all the pieces have been burnished, painted, carved, and fired (the modern way in an electric kiln), the pottery pieces require a final polishing. Some modern potters still use deer fat or the oil from deer fat to create a protective, shiny, and alluring surface. The fifth-grade students plan to use olive oil, vegetable oil, or lard to recreate the traditional look.

These pictures are examples of how the children in first and second grade are beginning to create abstract drawings. So far, the children have determined that "if a picture doesn't look like anything" or "the parts of a thing are put in the wrong places," the picture is abstract. In picture number one, the student drew a whale in detail and as realistically as possible. In picture number two, the student moved two parts of the animal to a different place on the whale's body. In picture number three, the student drew even more abstractly as she began to like this style of representation. Finally, in picture number four, the abstracted whale takes on a unique form as it no longer resembles a whale.

Students also recognized similarities and differences in their abstract drawings to petroglyphs and prehistoric representations of animals. Some children concluded that the people who drew petroglyphs long ago may not have been trying to draw the animal perfectly but instead were either drawing how they felt about the animal or drawing the spirit of the animal.

Students also worked on large paper to practice drawing abstractly, observe how others draw, and determine how these "petroglyph-like" pictures run into each other or overlap.

Students plan to use these drawings in combination with collage techniques of the animals' habitats to create

14x14-inch multi-media panels. The panels are intended to hang at a "100 Years in Manoa" exhibit during the second semester of the 2007-2008 school year.