The Tools You Need and the Ones You Don't (About Six Bucks of Stuff)
Let's get this out of the way first. I priced one of those "beginner pottery kit" bundles online once, out of curiosity, and it was eighty-nine dollars. I looked at what was actually in it and got a little annoyed, honestly, because it was maybe thirty dollars of stuff wearing a nicer box. I'm not going to do that to you.
Here's what you actually need to start.
What you need
A wire tool. This cuts your clay off the wheel head when you're done. About two bucks. Some are a wooden dowel with wire strung between two ends, some are just a wire with a toggle on each side. Doesn't matter which. Don't overthink it.
A wooden rib. Flat, curved edge, fits in your palm. This is for smoothing the outside of your piece while it's still spinning. Two or three dollars. Metal ones exist too, and you'll want one eventually for trimming, but for week one, wood.
A needle tool. Basically a sturdy pin in a handle. Used for trimming the top edge of a piece level, and for checking wall thickness by poking straight down through the clay to feel where the bottom is. A dollar, maybe a little more. Careful with this one — it's a thin metal point and it's sharper than it looks, so know where your other hand is before you push it anywhere.
That's it. That's your six bucks, give or take. The studio has sponges, and you'll want one, but honestly you probably have a kitchen sponge at home that'll do the exact same job before you ever spend money on one labeled "pottery sponge."
What you don't need
You don't need a trimming kit with fourteen shapes in it. You don't need a texture roller. You don't need an underglaze set before you've thrown a single bowl that survived. All of that stuff has a place eventually, maybe, if you keep going. Right now it's just stuff between you and the clay.
You also don't need to buy a bag of clay yet. The studio provides it for class, and I'd rather you get a few sessions in before you decide what clay body you even like working with. Some people love a smoother porcelain-ish clay right away. I like something a little more toothy myself, more grog in it — that's just my preference, not a rule, but I'd rather you figure out your own preference after your hands have some mileage on them instead of guessing at week one.
What actually matters more than tools
Wear clothes you don't care about. Clay gets on you, on your knees especially if you lean in, and it doesn't always wash out clean. Roll your sleeves up past the elbow. If you've got long hair, tie it back — not because it's dangerous exactly, more because you will absolutely get clay in it otherwise and then you're wearing it home.
And here's the thing nobody puts in the kit box: you're going to need a low bar for what counts as a win the first few weeks. I had a Primary kid ask me once what I do all day, and I told her, "I make bowls." She said, "why." I did not have a good answer for her. I thought about it for most of that week, actually, and I'm still not sure I've landed on one that satisfies me. I bring that up because if a nine-year-old can stump you on why you're doing this, don't expect yourself to walk in with some deep sense of purpose about your first pot. You don't need one. You need wet hands and a willingness to make something ugly.
Which is my actual opinion on this, not just a nice thing to say: your first pots should be bad. Not "learning experience" bad in some soft way — actually kind of ugly, lopsided, maybe a little too thick on one side. I'd rather you make five bad bowls in one class than spend the whole time babying one careful attempt. Your hands learn faster than your brain does at this stage, and they only learn by doing it wrong a bunch of times fast. So don't buy a fancy tool and think it's going to save you from that. It won't. Nothing will. That's kind of the whole deal here.
Before next time
You don't need to buy anything before the first class — the studio has loaner tools for everyone starting out, so hold off on spending money until you know what you actually like using. Just show up in clothes you don't mind ruining a little.