Most people can only dream of their drawings coming to life, but for 48 Fluvanna County second graders, those dreams became a reality last week.

On Dec. 9, a line of second graders filed into the Central Elementary auditorium. They took their seats and quietly whispered and giggled to each other, having no idea why they had been summoned there. As the whispering quieted, their art teacher, Debra Goldie, called for the kids’ attention and reminded them of the monsters they had drawn for Halloween a few months prior. What they didn’t know when they drew them was that some of the monster drawings would be selected to be sent to Fluvanna County High School to be used for a special surprise.

Under the direction of art teachers Diane Greenwood and Michelle Coleman, the FCHS Crafts and Decorative Arts class and the Computer Graphics class had worked together to turn the drawings into 3-D clay sculptures, complete with packaging that include each second grader’s name, monster description, and original drawing. The monsters– many of them named Godzilla– had “powers” ranging from blue fire to flying and definitely showed off the creativity of kids.

“I found [the] idea on Pinterest when looking for project ideas for my students.  I discussed it with Ms. Goldie and Ms. Greenwood to see if it was something that we could pull off,” said Coleman. “We chose [which drawings to do] based on what would work in clay,” she added. The drawings were scanned and distributed to the high school students who spent weeks bringing the drawings to life. Using the top halves of clear, plastic food containers and pieces of cardboard which had been printed to look like professional, four-color toy packaging, the art students worked hard to get them ready for the big moment.

When the surprise was finally revealed to the kids, they all gasped and covered their mouths with excitement. Some of the high school artists came to help pass out the creations to the kids as they were called up one by one to receive their figures.

“I had no idea what we were going to the auditorium for,” said second grader Ava Goodfield.  “I had no idea. I was like, huh?” said second grader Oscar Rivera-DeJesus, who added that after he saw his monster he thought “It’s amazing.”

When asked if she had plans on doing somethings like this in future Coleman replied “Yes. Our challenge is that we have to have an upper level class running in the same semester as a computer graphics class to make it happen.  As long as that is a constant, we will continue to try to make it a permanent part of our classes.” This unique project which Coleman hopes will be the first of many even made the local news, showing how the impactful collaboration between schools and grades can be.