Glassblowing Workshop

First I want you all to check out the new book carousels I made in the blog sidebar. I'm so excited about how cool they are. The first one has some great books on using a Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling. Further down I made one using many of the Ambleside Online Year 2 selections (that one is a ferris wheel - not a carousel, lol). We are currently using every one of those. Under that is a carousel of supplemental workbooks and stuff that we use and that W likes. Take a look!!

J and W has a great glassblowing class yesterday in Long Island.  After a brief overview, J chose to make a bowl and W, a glass.  The glass is liquid and is kept hot in a 2000 degree oven.  It is swirled onto the end of a long pole, and then you blow into the tube for the far end to created a small bubble of air in the liquid glass on the other end.  Then the glass is dipped into some finely crushed colored glass - to give your piece some color.  The pole frequently goes back into the oven to keep the glass soft and liquidy and also has to keep spinning or it will drip right off onto the floor.  Various metal tool are used for shaping and cooling.  This was one of the more interesting workshops we've ever taken and the kids enjoyed it a lot.  Today we're going back to pick up the bowl and glass they made!