For her Social Studies class, Rachel had a project where she was supposed to build a replica of the Temple of Hephaestus, an ancient Greek temple in Athens. She started out by trying to roll pieces of paper into columns and was planning on gluing them to a platform...but it wasn't working. She was so cute, she painted the columns brown, and the base green. I let her work on this for a day. (This may seem mean to other parents, but I really encourage my kids to be as independent as possible on ALL of their school assignments, and so far it has taught them how to be "A" students without mommy or daddy doing the work for them.) Win. Win.
Well, after a day of her struggling, I asked her if she had ever seen a picture of the temple, and she said no. So I suggested she do some research and showed her how. Aha! It was hilarious to see the lights turn on as she realized that she was going about this project all wrong. She discarded her brown columns and green base...and we came up with a different plan.
After a short trip to the store...and a few packages of marshmallows and chocolates later, we came home with the supplies we needed. (The chocolates, although a necessity, were not used for the replica.) Saturday morning, she set to work with Taylor as her engineer/consultant.
It is not an exact replica. The number of columns is not the same as the real thing...
But I think it turned out really awesome!
And I'm so glad that she has an awesome big brother who was willing to spend a few hours on his Saturday morning to help her bring her idea to life.
The other kids were really excited that Rachel had chosen marshmallows to use for her columns. I'm glad we bought 3 big bags of them...they seemed to keep disappearing out of the kitchen. When I looked out the back window, the younger 4 kids were having a "marshmallow picnic" out on the trampoline snuggled up in their blankets. Too funny. It's a good thing Andy's a dentist...our household seems to have an unhealthy obsession with sugar.
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