With hot glue guns found all over the tables and toothpicks scattered around room 625, the art class, supervised by Sharon Scharf, made toothpick houses. Painted, cut and glued toothpicks in various sizes were used to create miniature houses for the first time since 1998.

Students paired up or worked alone to create river rafts, barns and houses of all description. Not only did the intricate designs take time to map out, but also gluing each toothpick together required patience to make it perfect.

“I planned on four days of work,” Scharf said. “However, the students are were “into” the project and designed such elaborate creations that I felt we had to take longer than four days”

Scharf was hoping that the students would learn about design and architecture. The project taught them how to work in the third dimension and it brought out a great deal of creativity.

“I learned how to construct a stable house,” Whitney Ensom, ’05, said. “When I was younger I always used to build houses, but they fell. Scharf gave me inspiration to continue building and taught me the proper way of building houses.”

The house project was such a success that Scharf plans on to use it again next year.

“Johanna Iest (’05) and I worked together and decided we wanted to build a beach house,” Ashley Tucker, ’05, said. “Because we love the beach and always wish we lived their, it was so much fun building the house.”

The art class will be experimenting with watercolors and learning how to paint with them for three or four weeks during March.

For more information on the art class and further projects, students and parents can contact Scharf at 297-9464 ext. 159.