Occasionally, students miss art. It happens. Unfortunately, it can sometimes happen right in the middle of a project, or a student may miss a project entirely. Students get especially anxious if they miss the clay project. I do not take official attendance in the art room. However, when students miss art, they are often distraught about missing something so very important to them!
If a student is absent due to illness, I will stay after school to be in the art room, allowing that student time to catch-up with parent permission (if that student wants to catch-up on what he or she missed), or I will excuse the project for that student, whichever he or she prefers.
If a student is absent for a family vacation, I will simply excuse the student from completing that project and we will move on. Time will not be granted outside of regularly scheduled class times. This includes the grade level clay project.
Please understand that the times I am not with students are critical for planning and preparation for future lessons. This is why I limit catch-up opportunities to students who have suffered an illness.
Another limiting factor is the reality of building with clay. If a student misses clay building for any reason, it can be incredibly difficult to catch up to the class because clay projects take many days to dry out in order to fire in the kiln. Also, every firing of the kiln slowly breaks it down, so it will only be fired when full of projects. I cannot fire the kiln for a lone clay project. Because of these difficulties, I always have spare demo pieces I hold onto. If your child misses building a clay project, but returns for the glazing week, he/she will be allowed to choose one of the demo pieces to keep and glaze.