Olive Juice Studio

 Friday, May 7, 2010 at 11:44am

Hi Everyone!!! I wanted to share with you a project my fourth grader and I worked on for the past few weeks called the “State Fair.” What a HUGE assignment for a fourth grader to take on!!! Each student is assigned a state to research. They have to learn as much as possible about the economy, government, industry, history, agriculture, etc. After doing all of the research each child has to pick from a list of 7-8 projects to complete using the information they found while researching. They then have to write a paperabout what they learned, present itto the entire class without using any notecards and then today all of the parents and the entire school are invited to a “State Fair” to seeall of the projects on display and they sing songs about the United States. It’s a REALLY big deal and I’m headed toschool in about an hour toattend thefair.

My son got the state of Colorado and decided to make a 3-D game board of Pikes Peak.We spent hours and hours building this mountain out of the pink foam insulation for houses -we broke chunks of the foam and stacked them using a hot glue gun and a long screw to anchor the pieces together. Once we had the basic frame we used newpaper, duct tape and masking tape to give the mountain more dimension. Then, we covered it with over four packages of Rigid Wrap (plaster coated fabric) and covered the entire mountain. We let it dry overnight and then built stairs spiraling around the entire mountain using scraps of the pink foam insulation, paper scraps and duct tape. We then covered the steps and the entire mountain with another layer of Rigid Wrap plaster and let it dry overnight. The next step was to paint the entire mountain gray and added highlights with black paint in the creases of the steps and wherever it looked like a shadow would form.

With the help of Microsoft Word we designed a sign for the top of Pikes Peak and a sign with the games name on it – my son named his game “Colorado Calamity.” We also worked together making up trivia questions (True and False, Multiple Choice, Fill-in the blank and Yes/No questions). My son came up wtih the questions and I typed them. He came up with 70 trivia questions and 22 “Calamity” questions. The “Calamity” questions were scenarios – such as, “There’s an avalanche up ahead run back seven spaces quickly to avoid getting hurt!” Or “A hiker needs your help – climb up four steps to offer assistance.” The point of the game is to see who can make it to the top of Pikes Peak first. It turned out great and he actually brought home his grade yesterday – he got an A+!!!! WoHooo! I was so happy for him and he was soooooooo proud of himself! He kept telling me that was the hardest he had ever worked on any project so he definitely earned his grade!!!

Here’s a photo of the entire game:

(My first grader donated four Lego men to the cause to be used as the game tokens – see them climbing the mountain?!)

I’m a proud mama, but oh so glad this project is over! LOL! : )

Olive it when my child is proud of his work!

x EVOO (my other aliases include Olive Juice Studio’s Big Kahuna, Sicilian Green, or just Kim)