Clay House Facades

Access the full lesson with vocab, teacher instructions, and step-by-step student instructions!

Clay house plaques are a great way to build skills in replicating texture and small details. They’re also really logistically easy for my big classes since they’re flat and can be stacked in the kiln, and we typically paint them instead of glaze because it looks more realistic.

The process is fairly simple. It involves rolling out slabs, making templates (or using some of the provided ones in the link above) to cut out the house shapes, and decorating. Students love to make their houses unique—I often ask them to make a house that fuses multiple architectural styles. The prompts can get even more specific, like making a house for a book character or based around a theme (fall, floral, etc).

By the end, students are exposed to famous buildings from around the world, they contemplate major architectural styles, and they practice details like shingles, brick, cobblestone, and more.

Check out the examples below and access the full lesson to try it out yourself!