The existence of prehistoric pottery shards paints a clear picture of ancient artisanal practices while highlighting ancestral clumsiness. Leave behind traces of your own civilization with today's Groupon to Thrown Elements Pottery in Arlington Heights.

• For $10, you get $20 toward drop-in paint-your-own-pottery sessions.
• For $25, you get a two-hour wheel-throwing or hand-building class, including paint and glaze (an $80 value).
  
  

Thrown Elements Pottery encapsulates the joys of sculpting and painting pots in energetic classes and drop-in activities. Drop-in paint-your-own pottery sessions allow amateur artists to decorate pottery on their own schedule either at the studio or at home ($9 a day for adults plus the cost of the piece painted). Choose a pre-fired piece of dinnerware ($8–$18) and adorn it with rainbow stripes or make a creature ($11–$18) come to life using only a paintbrush and a bolt of lightning. Specialty pieces may vary in price outside of average price ranges listed.

During hand-building classes, students in small groups of 14 can learn to mold vases, statues, plates, and mugs, and wheel-throwing sessions allow eight humans to manipulate lumps of clay atop revolving motorized wheels. Beginners' classes initiate sculptors into the basics of wheel throwing and hand building. Alternatively, more adept fingers can stretch their skills in the intermediate and advanced technique classes, which focus on surface treatments, combining thrown elements, and sculpting pint-size teacups that can talk.

Painting is included in this Groupon when done the same day as the class; a studio fee may apply of painting is done at a later date.