Each year in March, the Hillside PTA hosts a week-long, art enrichment project to celebrate Art Appreciation Month.  Thanks to this year’s Art Appreciation chairs, Jaime Lauro and Amy Drost, this year’s project not only celebrated art, but carried a positive message and beautified the school as well!

This year’s art project was based on an inspirational book by Linda Kranz titled Only One You.  In the book you follow along with a small fish name Adri, whose mama and papa give him comforting words of advice to guide him as he goes out to explore the world.  Simple, yet powerful, the main message of the book is summed up in this line – “There’s only one you in this great big world. Make it a better place.”  The artwork in the book is beautifully decorated rocks creating the unique “fish” in the story.  Taking from this idea, the chairs organized a lesson plan for volunteers to use in the classrooms and collected over 250 pounds of rocks and painting materials.  During Art Appreciation Week, parent volunteers went into the classrooms, read the book to the class, held a discussion on the meaningful topics the book touches on and had every child paint a rock just as unique as they are.

In order to have everyone involved in the project, the PTA also hosted a themed rock painting event for all the staff to enjoy.

After all the masterpiece rocks were collected, they were sprayed with a sealant to keep them fresh looking through all of New Jersey’s crazy weather.  Then, once Spring decided to show up, thanks to Hillside parent, and landscaper, Nick DiFrancisco (of White Birch Landscaping), our rock garden was installed.

It really brightens up the main entrance to our school!  Come check it out!

*Thank you to all the parents that were involved with this project, and a special thank you to Nick DiFrancisco of White Birch Landscaping for donating his time and materials to making our rock garden a reality.