Upper School Fixer Upper-Painted Chair Backs

I'm not sure why this was so, but we teach at a newer charter school that exists in portable building and somehow these are the chairs that the art room ended up with. The backs were made of particle wood and as they were sat in the screws began to disintegrate the wood and they just fell apart. That left our room with ridiculously unusable chairs. You should have seen our tiny kindergarteners trying to sit in these things. After quite a bit of brainstorming, Kim and I decided that instead of spending $1000.00 of our grant money on chairs or stools we would enlist our upper school students (7-12) to help us recreate masterpieces on chair backs.
 
First, Travis measured and then cut to size 24 pieces of 1/2" plywood. It took two sheets and cost $80.00.
Second, I primed each piece of wood.
Third, the students needed to chose a classic work of art to recreate.
Some of the students were paired together for this assignment...that sometimes created a challenge but in the end it worked out well enough.
Most of these students have never painted in their lives so the end results of these chair backs are quite astonishing. They have really transformed our room. The elementary students LOVE it too.
When they were finished painting we sealed them with a matte acrylic spray.
I spent a good while pre-drilling holes and screwing these things together, but I'm so happy with the results. We painted the table side of the chairs a "table color" while the artwork faces out.