EUGENE, Mo. - A swirl of texture and color, Cole County R-5 Elementary students created their first schoolwide art project last year.
From the first day of school in August 2012, first-year art teacher Amanda Davis encouraged students to collect bottle caps of all sizes and colors.
"She didn't tell us what the project was," said fourth-grader Kyliah Tassrath. "But we wanted to find out what we were going to do."
For the next eight months, students like Tassrath, Paige Rademann, JeAnn Boessen and Caden Anderson recruited friends and family to help in the collection effort.
"My Grandma drinks a lot of orange soda," Tassrath said.
Rademann's grandmother set up collection buckets at church for sizable returns, she said.
And Anderson and his sister contributed lids from their favorite drinks.
"My mom and dad are still collecting," Boessen said.
By spring, Davis' classroom was brimming with bags of color-sorted caps.
In May, when she expected chaos, well-behaved students worked diligently when she gave them the task of gluing the caps to the like-colored design on six-feet-by-eight-feet plywood.
"It was like a puzzle," Davis said. "It was a challenge to figure out how all the pieces would fit."
Through the summer, Davis secured the students' work with thousands of screws.
And when students walked in the first day of this school year, they were able to see the final product, proudly displayed in a major hallway intersection.
The swirly-tree accents the school name and motto "Believe It, Achieve It, Be It."
While working up close, one cap at a time, the students couldn't see the image.
In the hallway, they are pleased with their efforts, Tassrath agreed.
They ran out of green lids for the grassy area, so they incorporated gold colors and clear caps, which allowed the green paint below to show through.
The caps are normally not recyclable, Davis noted.
"That's why I wanted to turn them into projects," she said.
Davis believes the mural will have an effect on the school's pride and sense of community.
"I had a vision in my head; once we started I was almost overwhelmed," Davis said. "It went over much bigger than I thought it would."
Now in her second year, Davis hopes this will not be the only schoolwide project.
"I've heard so many comments that it brightens the hallway and makes the school feel "young,'" she said. "There's been such an awesome response.
"I want to do more, big things, to leave my mark here."