When Gretchen McAbery, parent of Welches Elementary School student Emma
McAbery, sent out Christmas cards to relatives this past December, they
weren’t the usual Hallmark variety.

These cards featured paintings of flowers and of Mount Hood at night, created
by some special artists.

The painters included Emma and her classmates, as part of a larger project in
their fourth and fifth grade class that was part history, part art, part
economics and part literature.

“At first it was a card and it was very touching, but when they found out it
was Emma’s artwork, they were very impressed,” Gretchen said of the
reaction people had when they received the cards. “Every year, the kids do
some artwork ... but this particular thing, by doing the cards, it’s something
that’s really easy to keep, really easy to frame and really easy to share.”

The teacher spearheading the effort, Virginia Knowles, explained that her
class studied one artist at a time, learning about the artists’ style and the
world at the time the artist lived and then compared different artists (such as
Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet).

The students then created their own art in the style of the artist, followed by a
descriptive writing process to express what they see in their art and how they
feel about it.

“With more and more curriculum expected for students and teachers to cover,
unfortunately art can be pushed to a low priority level,” Knowles wrote in an
email. “Art is an important part of every child’s education. Art is a unique way
children can express feelings and explore different cultures and historical time
periods.”

The final step of the project was putting the art on blank greeting cards, which
can be purchased at the Welches Elementary School office, 24901 Salmon
River Road. Cards are for sale for $2 for one small card, $2.50 for a large
card, $8 for a set of five small cards and $10 for a set of five large cards, and
the proceeds will be used to purchase new art supplies.

Knowles has also brought in an element of math, with students tracking the
difference between the cost of the cards and the revenue from sales, while
students also shop around to get the best prices possible. The students will
also get to vote on what each purchase will be, with higher quality
paintbrushes as the first acquisition.

Fifth grader Jeret Gillingham, 10, noted the class could also use some new
paints, as the ones they have “dried up a bit.” Then he can create more art
like his rendition of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” featuring Mount Hood.

“(It’s) the Van Gogh style, how it’s kind of a picture, but it’s smeared in a little
bit,” he said.

Fourth grader Riley Andersen, 10, who hopes the class will purchase some
sponges for art projects, was pleased with her painting of a sunflower.

“I think mine turned out good,” she said. “I did two different shades of petals.
It’d be like one showing, and one side it’ll be like dark side.”

Noah Perry, 11, also painted a sunflower and made some artistic choices for
his accompanying poem to make it stand out, including words written taller
than others and dashes around other words to highlight them.

“I didn’t want it to be just like a normal poem, I wanted it to be different, that
you would know what it is and the adjectives of it would kind of tell you what
it would be like,” said Perry, a fifth grader. “To make it, I just looked at the
flower and kind of thought about it.”

Fifth grader Emma McAbery, 10, experimented with blending colors to create
her sunflower painting, and hopes that the class will purchase some new
paints so she can make even better colors.

“What I wanted to do was kind of blend the colors to make a different color to
make the petals and the inside, to make it colorful and bright,” Emma said. “I
started out with green or red, added other colors to make different colors.”