Parent Involvement - Family Art Night

I just love to walk in the front door of my school.  The PTA at my elementary school does a wonderful job of getting parents involved.  One of the events they have is a Family Art Night.  Students and their families decorate ceiling tiles for our building.  I love how inviting and kid friendly it makes our halls. 

Kiddos are given a square piece of brown paper and art supplies.  They can use their imagination to create a masterpiece.  The paper is then attached to ceiling tiles in a checkerboard pattern.  We've got some ingenious artists out there!!!  Here's a couple of my favorite.

A couple of years ago the PTA brought each teacher on campus a blank tile and asked us to paint it any way we wanted to show something about our personality or subject.  They wanted to put them on the ceiling right outside our classroom doors.  Ummmmm...wait a minute.  We aren't artists.  In fact, most of us are very artistically challenged when it comes to something that will be displayed for all the world to see.  You can't believe how nervous we were.  We agonized over what to do with our tiles for days.  We just thought getting our kiddos prepared for the state assessment was nerve wracking!!!  One of us even hired an artistic room mom to paint hers.  We finally decided to make a paint party out of it and planned a couple of days after school to get together and paint our tiles.  You know, they really weren't half bad all said and done.

I used to paint some to relax.  Of course that was YEARS ago in my pre-chasing three boys around life.  Surely I could pull this off, right?  I have a poster in my classroom that has one white daisy and one yellow daisy and reads, no two flowers bloom exactly alike.  I love that poster.  It reminds me just how differently each kiddo learns.  I decided to use that for my inspiration.  The final result???




                                                                   Drumroll please.....

I was pretty pleased with the end result.  Of course I won't share with you the embarrassing number of weeks, days, hours I spent on it.  I wanted my new blog to show something about my personality, so after weeks of thinking about what to name my blog I decided to use my painted tile as my inspiration.  I even emailed the pic to Misty and Erica and Honey Bunch Blog Designs so they could get an idea of what I had in mind.  I got to see a sneak peek last night.  It is going to be so AWESOME!!!!  I am so excited to have the new and improved design up and running.

Hope the family ceiling tile night gives you some ideas for your own campus.  Happy Monday!!!

Amy