Last year our Kinders made a Shrinky-Dink glass vase, They came out beautiful! You can get Shrinky-Dink from an art supply then cut the pages in 4 or 6 pieces, lightly sand in a criss cross pattern and have each student draw a picture or trace their hands and let them color on the sanded side with Sharpies markers. Then bake in a 350 degree oven or toaster oven abot 3 min., make sure to lay them on chip board first, after they shrink you need to seal them with "Krylon crystal clear acrylic coating" Do 3 coats and dry in between. when they are dry for 24 hrs. then glue them with "GE Silicone ll Household Glue" to a glass vase with a flat surface. You can embellish the vase with miniature tiles or wire. The vases we embellished made the most money.
I have helped many classrooms of my children do projects.
Some of my favorites and unique: the kids made a chessboard PLUS the chess pieces out of clay and had them fired. Very cool. A very original and low cost but high yielding in returns is painting aluminum garbage cans....yes garbage cans. First sand a bit to give it tooth, spray prime and have the kids paint their theme images in latex paint. When the paint is dry, outline all the images with a large sharpie, we used checkerboard borders for punch. Clear coat a few times. These sold from 250-600 and only cost about 20 bucks. People used them to store dog food (can use a pet theme) as a hamper for dirty clothes and to keep sports equipment or dress up clothes in. They are great because the lids are light and little ones can use these too. I usually do 5 kids/can. We do "what's in your pockets" for the little ones. We get a big frame made, put in a cork board and totally cover the frame with "pocket items" from the little ones....small plastic toys, keys, plastic jewelry, anything you would find between your carseats! Each child brings in a sandwich bag full of items. It is fun and easy, just use a hot glue gun...very whimsical. We do book cases, but also have parents/children donate their favorite book so a collection goes with it. We just did an "Andy Warhol" mirror frame. The first graders colored with marker their black and white photos, colored the mirror frame black and the edges a black and white check. Very pop art and cool looking. Their photos look great and the checkered edges give it a movie reel look. The biggest hit we ever did was with a kindergarten class. We did a modern art class to teach the kids some techniques, then brought large pieces of flat canvas and quarts of latex paints. No adult touched these but the kids were supervised, we had groups of 4-5 for each painting. They were later mounted and framed. Generated no less than $400 each, and with 8 groups (2 classes) it was a huge success! My husband had ours hanging in his office and colleagues comment all the time on what a great contemporary painting it is,. They have no idea kindergarteners did it! kids are great....so uninhibited. The last unique one I saw, but didn't do was a jelly bean mosaic. It was a large line drawing (blown up from the kids) and completely covered by glueing jelly beans on it. (black ones for the outlines, etc...) it was very fun and unique. It was mounted in a large shadow box type of frame, must have been done on a thick matte board or something. Hope these inspire you.
Last year I bought wooden tray, painted it red and brought to school with multi colored acylic paint had each kindergartener paint a heart on it....some hearts were large and curlicue...all different...polyeurathaned and had plexi liner cut for the tray at the hardware store ($12)sold for $75.00
I don't know if this has already been mentioned but one year we took a wooden serving tray you can pick up at local craft store, painted it and then we decoupaged the class picture on it in the middle, we also decouped some flowers and stuff our theme was a spring fling.
We have done many class projects at our school every year for our auction. We are a Pre-k thru 8 school. The most moneyw as made on our 8th grade project. We have a scrapbook and trunk! The students do their own scrapbook page of pictures from the time they started at our school--most start in Pre-K, then they also send in other pictures to be decoupaged on the trunk. The kids have a blast making the pages and parents do the trunk--the entire trunk is filled with pictures from their 10 years at our school@ It's aways a big hit!
That covers 8th grade--7th grade this past year we bought a wishing well and had all the kids out their names on it in any way they wanted and then we used a burning gun and permanently burned those names by tracing their work--it turned out beautifully!
Our 5th graders made homemade Christmas cards which is a big hit because our auction is either at the end of October or the beginning of November--our local printer laminates tehm and takes care of all of that as a donation! Our younger grades have done the Apron and hat--donations from Pampered Chef, they have done popcorn bowls with the thumb prints, we've done cookbooks with the kids' favorite recipes, there are so many things that you can do!
Our 6th graders made bird houses and put their names on them like our 7th graders did with the wishing well.
If you have any other questions or need other ideas please email me! This year is our 26th annual auction!
Thanks!
Missy This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
One terrific item we used was making an actual book - there are kits you can buy, complete w/paper, markers, and a postage-paid envelope; the kids drew pictures and came up w/a story. The book is returned as a hard-bound, typeset, personal book! Great thing to have, and something that gets used, too. The kits were only around $20. Amazing stuff. We also had the classes make one of their memories of school for an end-of-the-year teacher gift.
