WILTON - A tarantula! A dolphin! A bald eagle! A fish! A frog! All were ideas children named as they sat down in front of 25 pounds of clay.

Sculptor Jeanne Bruce of Temple had already cut the block into smaller pieces and made some shapes out of them Friday at the Foothills Arts Center in Wilton.

Now the children were ready to explore working with the clay as one of the events of the two-day Wilton Blueberry Festival that continues Saturday.

It was time to play on the mountain of clay, as Bruce referred to it.

Bruce, who has done many commissions for the state for new buildings including Cape Cod Hill School in New Sharon, sat down and gave each child and his or her mother and aunt, some clay.

"You could look at the clay and see what's in it," Bruce suggested.

Louis Pyle, 11, of Louisiana initially couldn't decide what he wanted to do because he had so many ideas.

"I figured out what the clay needed me to make," Pyle said. "A frog."

His cousin, Madison Ambelang, 8, of California, went to work to roll out legs for a tarantula. The children, including Cassie Ambelang, 4, who sat on her mother Jo-Anne Shibles' lap as they made a moose, were all up for the summer visiting their grandmother and mother, Betty Colley Shibles of Connecticut, who has a seasonal residence on Wilson Pond.

"I'm going to make a fish," Bruce said. She made quick work of rolling and shaping the clay into a fish body with eyes.

That looks like a whale, Pyle said.

She shaped a little bit more.

"Maybe its a land-locked salmon," she said.

The type of gray clay they were using could be fired or air-dried and painted.

After more rolling out, pushing and pulling, Bruce asked if the clay was getting dry. She sprayed two of the children's hands and they made hand prints on the table. The clay was soft, gray and easy to mold, Pyle said.

His mother, Stacey Pyle, added, "it was cool, damp, sticky and fun."