A little too much shaping made the bowl wilt.  It was about this time Neya started crying.

It's frustrating when you're a kid.  Every arts & crafts toy always includes pictures on the box of stuff created by competent artists, setting up the expectation that a kid will be able to create a beatiful fantastic thing.  It is always frustrating and a blow to his or her self esteem when the kid discovers that he or she cannot produce anything nearly as good as what's depicted on the box.

When the bowl wilted, my daughter began complaining that she “couldn't do anything right”.  I felt bad for her.  But Mom came to the rescue and simply balled up the clay and said “It's okay hon, it's just clay, you can always start over. See?”

“Lynnea, anything that requires a skill is unlikely to work the first time you try it.  Pottery is like anything else, you will have to do it over and over again if you want to become really good at it.  Since this is just a toy wheel, and therefore very limited, why don't you just plan to have some fun playing with the clay… you don't have to make a beautiful vase to have fun.” I said.

I won't call it the “final product” because Neya has been talking about painting it, but I think for her first attempt, the bowl came out okay.  I don't know if she'll ever use the wheel again, though.

Personally, I wonder if the more high-end craft toys are worth it, given that the first attempts are likely to frustrate.  Perhaps construction paper, glitter, glue, scrap material, markers, and crayons are the best crafty stuff for kids.

The wheel is battery powered, and not very strong, hence most of the things I've seen potters do in the few televised segments I've seen related to pottery wheels, simply weren't possible with this wheel.

I should add at this point that the wheel came with NO instructions, and mom and dad know NOTHING about making pottery.  So we were all winging it.

Lynnea didn't know what to make but eventually settled on a basic bowl.

As you can see nobody thought to put anything down under the pottery wheel to prevent stuff from getting on the table.  *sigh*

Lynnea received a toy pottery wheel as a gift awhile back, and every now and then brings up the subject of trying it out.  This Saturday she got her chance, and was very excited at the prospect.  (So excited, she couldn't decide whether to use the word “right” or “write” and instead settled for “rwitte”!)