How to Build a Ziggurat
Our handmade Ziggurat took 2 hours spread over several days. This project can be modified so it's suitable for children as young as 7 years. The challenging parts of this project are the details like the staircase and arched opening.
We used a Claybord from Blick Art Supplies measuring 8 inch square. The clay is from Aardvark clay and is in 3 different colors and cone numbers. Since we are not firing our clay in a kiln, as we are air drying, we didn't mind mixing clay of different cone numbers.
We rehydrated our clay in water as we bought it years ago and it had dried to a point of being unusable. I placed it in a large plastic tray and filled it with water. I turned the clay over after 12 hours so all sides were submerged in the water. The clay became useable once again and maybe too wet! Once we formed our ziggurat, we had better precision in forming and cutting the clay when the clay had dried for a day or two.
Other supplies were our clay tools. It's been years since we bought them, but I'm sharing an alternative to the ones we used. If you don't have tools as these, you may use a toothpick or popsicle stick. We also used a baking scraper which came in very helpful at the end of the project.
It took several days up to 1-2 weeks for our ziggurat to dry completely. We only had breakage on one staircase. The 'ground' cracked completely, so I removed it, but the structure dried very well with almost no cracking.
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