Newtown Middle School eighth grade art enrichment students participated in a full day of art on February 21 in place of their regular school day.

The students spent the day in an art room at the school under the guidance of art teachers Kristen Ladue and Leigh Anne Coles.

For this year’s day of art, the eighth grade students worked on creating ceramic “postcards.” According to the art teachers, the students were tasked with brainstorming places they have been, want to go, or have “traveled” to in books or movies. Students could also choose to combine two places to make a new place to feature on their postcards. They then designed and created rectangular ceramic “postcards.”

The eighth graders began working on their projects Friday morning. By early afternoon, many students were busy molding the creations to show the chosen places of interest. Ellie Arcario said she chose to portray Crystal Mountain in Washington because she loved visiting the area.

“I’ve never experienced anything like that before and it was really breathtaking,” Ellie said.

Nearby, Ashley Velsmid was working on her postcard, which combined Hawaii and Easter Island. She said she chose both because Hawaii sounds “really nice” and Easter Island “sounds cool.”

Gwenyth Shaw and Evan Chaudhary both used fictional places for their postcards. Evan depicted Hogwarts from the Harry Potter series and Gwenyth chose to create the Avengers Tower from the Avengers movie series.

Ms Ladue teaches all of the eighth grade art enrichment students this year and Ms Coles teaches all of the seventh grade art enrichment students. Looking around the room while the students worked, Ms Ladue remarked that they had never worked with ceramics before.

“The fact that they are doing such a great job with it, I think is amazing,” said Ms Ladue.

The eighth grade students were expected to continue working on their ceramic postcards in class following the full day effort on February 21. The final creations will be part of this year’s NMS Student Showcase, an evening for parents and community members to visit the school to see artwork and other student displays and demonstrations, set for April 28.

A seventh grade day of art is planned for February 28.