Eight Starpoint School students shot paint from bottles, carved clay with toothpicks and created wood sculptures to show parents, teachers and classmates at their art exhibit Thursday.Art education coordinator Amanda Allison, said three TCU art students from her art curriculum class developed the Starpoint art curriculum, called “Process of the Artist,” which she said gave her students the real-world experience of teaching art.

Allison, an art and art history professor, said her students asked the Starpoint students which medium they wanted to explore and taught the children how the elements of art can express emotion. They also taught the children about art history, she said.

“The (Starpoint) students said their problem-solving skills increased,” she said. “Some of the pressure was taken off and they started to see themselves as art makers.”

Fifth-grader Wyatt Jones, and other fifth- and sixth-graders at Starpoint, shared their lessons learned from the curriculum.

Wyatt said his favorite medium was the Art Nouveau and Art Deco style clay tiles. He said he wanted to create a story on the tiles about an alien who went to Egypt to build a throne and said the hardest part was making the alien’s hands.

“I learned that if you get too detailed, it will not work out the way you want it to,” he said. “And I learned that the hard way.”

Lauren Heffron, a senior art education major who taught wood sculpting, said the purpose of the curriculum was to give the children the opportunity to explore different media, such as clay, wood and paint.

“They did a lot of problem solving before they got to their final product,” she said, “and I think they learned a lot.”

Senior art education major Brittany Rebstock taught action painting, which let the children shoot paint from bottles onto their canvases. She said she also divided the children into two different groups to practice with paint.

“They were shooting paint out of bottles and using Tonka trucks, bouncing balls and using their hands to make patterns in the paint,” she said. “Then they tried to hug their teacher.”

Rebstock said they were pleased with how the curriculum worked out.

“We gave them a chance to dabble in different media,” she said. “That was our goal.