Bridging generations through art

A group of Central Kitsap Junior High School students brought a ray of sunshine to a local retirement home by making 3-dimensional snowflakes.

Becky Marshall, an art teacher at CKJH, talked to her students in December about going to the Country Meadows retirement cottages in Silverdale and creating art work for the residents.

The students were eager to participate, she said.

So, in early December, she got together some of her students and some clay art supplies to spend an afternoon at the retirement cottages. The students created clay snowflakes and assorted ornaments for the folks at the retirement cottages to keep.

The students created the clay ornaments at the retirement cottages, then used a few days of class time to paint them.

“I used a lot of color to make them look pretty,” said 15-year-old eighth-grader Casandra Thomas, one of the students who participated.

Thomas said the residents were really nice and took an interest in what the art students were doing.

“I wanted to get to know some of the older people to see how my perspective would change,” Thomas said.

She did learn from the experience.

“A lot of people can be nice in a lot of different ways and don’t judge people by their appearances,” she said.

Fourteen-year-old Adrian Ellison, a ninth-grader, said he used the art project to get better at working with clay and he wanted to participate because it sounded like an interesting project.

“I created some new things I didn’t know I knew how,” he said. He created some snowflakes and a sun out of clay.

Carla Halverson, a 13-year-old eighth-grader, also tried something new. In addition to making snowflakes, she also made a pinch bowl. To make the pinch bowl, she molded a lump of clay into a bowl then used her fingers to pinch the edges and smooth the sides. She also made a Christmas ornament that was a bulb with a snowflake on it.

She was the last student to finish in the two-hour slot spent at the retirement cottages, she said.

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