Cabin fever 2013 - pinch pots

My favourite side effect of winter is the kids' renewed interest in doing crafts together.  They tend to avoid it in the summer when they can be outside all the time and I miss doing these things with them.  Recently at school A made little 'pinch pots'.  A regular 1st grade item apparently.  For those of you without little ones to tell you, a pinch pot is just a clay pot molded by hand from a blob of aforementioned clay.  You can get them quite smooth if you keep a little bowl of water close by and dip your finger in.  Decorate however you like (I have a big jar of random beads and another of sequins that have been our decorations of choice).  I am guessing you can paint them once dry but I kind of like the natural colour.  The school one was painted and kiln fired (yellow! so cute).  I bought a big bucket of Crayola's air dry clay from Target (the kids' art and crafts projects section) and ours dry in front of the fireplace.  I am not sure what we are going to do with them all (be warned relatives back in Australia with birthdays looming...) but we have quite a row of them on our dining room windowsill.  I love that this is such an easy craft to set up as well.  Just grab the bucket of clay and a few embellishments and pull out your chunk of clay to work on.  I think I need to buy more clay.