HAYDEN - The halls of Hayden Meadows Elementary School were vibrant with the joyous sounds of music and the laughter of children as 176 kids participated in ArtShop Thursday afternoon.

ArtShop is a week-long event where children take morning and afternoon classes to learn to create with their hands and minds. The workshop offers classes emphasizing visual and performing arts - just about everything from painting, cartooning, clowning and juggling to playing marimbas, folding oragami and designing jewelry. The end of the week is a culmination of what they learned in the workshops when they perform during Art on the Green.

Owen Smith, 10, of Coeur d'Alene created an image of Captain America in Robert Brunn's scratchboard art class. It's a technique that requires a lot of patience and sharp tools to etch different shades of the image into layers of special paper. Owen's design was black on white.

"I really like Captain America. He's the first Avenger, you can't break his shield," Owen said.

He really enjoyed the marimba class because his grandma is the teacher. This was his first time attending ArtShop.

"If you like art, they have art. If you like to dance they have Zumba and hip hop. If you like instruments they have stomp," Owen said. "At Art on the Green, for marimbas, they have a really good finale. They haven't done this song before."

In Terry Barnard's clowning class, students chose clown names and created personas for their clown characters. They also learned how to make balloon animals and costumes as well as learned skits, magic tricks and juggling.

Zooey Lundgren, 10, sat across from Ally Erwin, 11, of Post Falls. Zooey's yellow eye paint and purple-colored lips were part of her experimentation in clown makeup. She said she just returned from China where she learned juggling in school in a class called "Jedi Jugglers."

Ally said she learned to juggle in David Groth's "Juggling and More" class last year and this was her second ArtShop.

"It's really fun and productive and you get to do a lot of fun stuff," Ally said.

"Maybe (ArtShop) doesn't sound that exciting at first, but especially with the projects you get to do, or the performances that you get to learn about and you learn a lot of new things, a lot of new tricks," Zooey said, "it actually turns out to be a really fun thing to do."

Ally's clown name is Clown the Clown, and Zooey's is Zofro the Clown.

In the gym, about a dozen kids juggled and balanced on stilts and globes. Groth said his juggling class is not just about teaching the kids to juggle, but about helping develop their senses of self confidence.

"I think it's a great community builder," he said. "The kids are so good about supporting and encouraging each other, and I just really enjoy seeing that part of it."

Food coordinator and ArtShop nurse Lyn Gerhard shared the enthusiasm with the kids.

"I think it's amazing that you can take a wide range of ages, kids that don't know each other, very few really do, start out with nothing Monday and end up so polished and together," she said. "Holy mackerel."

Beginning at 12:15 p.m. today, the ArtShop students will be performing their newly cultivated talents on the main (north) stage of North Idaho College campus.