A Great Idea for Art Night by Mimi Diehl

We had an art and academic night last week. Each kid had something on display. I of course wanted parents to look at all the work, not just their kid's class. Furthermore I wanted them to really look, not just glance. So I had an art scavenger hunt (actually, three in all so everyone didn't get the same one). When parents came in the door, I had a table set up with new "pointy" crayons and a stack of scavenger hunts that required hunters to find something specific in the artwork of each grade level. For instance, one item was "Find a cityscape with a clothesline in the 2nd grade gallery". Another was " Find a house collage that looks like it's at night in the 1st grade gallery" and so on. The scavenger hunt had a place to put the hunter's name and phone number or child's room #. People then took their completed scavenger hunt to the MP room (where a sculpture gallery was set up on the stage) and put it in a huge raffle box. The following day I pulled out scavenger hunts from the raffle box and those people won prizes. We actually had a glass blower performing (The Crystal Wizard...he was a HUGE success). Everything he made that night became prizes for the raffle.I'd never tried anything like it before and was worried about how it would go. It was amazing. People were out in the halls scrutinizing the work instead of just passing by. They were having fun. The artwork overshadowed what was going on in the regular classrooms. I'm going to make it even bigger next year.Anyway...I just wanted to share this with you because you might be able to make a version up that would work well at your school.