Conneaut Middle School students surprise younger students with sculptures

May 11—CONNEAUT — Thursday marked the culmination of weeks of work for Conneaut Middle School art students, who had spent a significant amount of time creating sculptures for students at Lakeshore Primary School.

Earlier this school year, Lakeshore students read the story, "I Need My Monster," drew monsters, and sent them to Conneaut Middle School, where art students created sculptures based on the drawings.

Jessica Kennedy, an art teacher at Conneaut Middle School, said she was inspired by another location where older kids sewed monsters for younger students.

"I was thinking, well that's not going to work, because I can't teach 33 kids how to sew, so I thought what can we do, how can we make these?" Kennedy said.

She said some of the monsters did not make it through the kiln the first time.

"For whatever reason, even though we let them dry, and the kids hollowed out [the monsters], so the clay couldn't be too thick when it goes into the kiln, we don't know why it happened," Kennedy said. "So we had a couple that needed remade, there was one that, actually, third time's the charm."

She said the project was fun.

"I chose my Art II students to do it, because they have had art for three years, this is not the first time they've worked with clay, so I thought they were the best group to do this project," Kennedy said.

Kennedy was impressed with how creative her students were.

"They were phenomenal, and they had so much fun," she said.

Ashton Sanden, an eighth grader at CMS, said he enjoyed the project.

"Our teacher ... showed us every project we'd be doing in Art II, and this was the one I wanted to do the most, because I thought there was a lot of creativity involved," he said.

Sanden said painting the monster he sculpted was difficult.