Wax Museum

Somebody, somewhere, figured out an ingenious way to make history "come alive" for our 5th graders. A wax museum! So fun and such a great way to engage these bright eleven year olds in their study of American History. The culminating project for the Hale Elementary fifth graders was to choose a famous American in history (and there could be no duplicating among all the fifth grade classes), write a report, make a poster and include a timeline, and then....THEN, the best part, was that each student got to become their famous American for a day.

Barrett chose Sandra Day O'Connor, the first female justice of the US Supreme Court. Doesn't she look fabulous? Thanks to Beth for letting us borrow the Judge Judy robe from Halloween long ago, and thanks to Ashley for offering up your wig. Unfortunately, Barrett tried on the old lady wig and declared, "This is not Sandra Day O'Connor hair."

So we were back to ground zero on the hair. What to do, what to do....

Well, let me tell you, getting Barrett's hair do to look like that took some serious effort. We started at 5:45 am (we had to be done by 6:30), curling, ratting, spraying, smoothing, powdering, styling, pinning, and more powdering. She was pleased with the end result, though, and really looked terrific. Add some pearl earrings, a little hot pink lipstick and mascara, and voila! Court in session!

At their wax museum, each student had a blue "button" cut out of construction paper taped to the floor in front of the them. The museum patrons (aka parents and fellow students) who toured the spectacular Famous American museum in the Hale cafeteria could step on the make-shift button and listen to each "wax" figure deliver a 30 second speech about their life. Yes, I may be a smidge biased, but I think Barrett’s speech was among the best of them all. She was very prepared, spoke loud and clear, and delivered a great speech (over and over and over…)

Some of my other favorites were Benjamin Franklin (her friend, Adam), Jackie Kennedy (her friend, Emily Woods), Elvis, Babe Ruth, Albert Einstein, Wyatt Earp, Dolly Parton, Helen Keller, Paul Revere, Calamity Jane (her friend, Riley), and Ginger Rogers.

What a great idea to engage our kids and get them thinking outside the box. I loved it.