Community Celebrations 3-D Timeline

Which special events are celebrated in your community? Create a 3-D timeline of community events—for any season!

• 1.

  A community becomes more than just a group of people living in the same place when they join together for special events such as parades, festivals, and picnics. Gather information about events in your community such as outdoor band concerts, recycling events, and health fairs. Use Crayola Erasable Colored Pencils to record all of the information you find. You can easily erase if you need to correct spellings or change the dates.

• 2.

  Write all the information on 12 large sheets of chart paper, one for each month of the year. Break into groups of two or three children, each group focusing on one month. Find out more about the community events that are scheduled in your assigned month. Send letters to the event coordinators to get details on what happens at the event, where it is located, times, and who sponsors it.

• 3.

  Work with your group, using your imaginations and Crayola Model Magic® compound to create 3-dimensional representations of the events in your month. Be as creative as you like, forming miniature scenes or simple representations of the event, such as a watermelon for a community picnic or a float for a community parade.

• 4.

  Here’s one idea: To create a bandshell to represent a summer concert, roll Model Magic compound flat with a marker barrel. Cut it in half. Curve one piece up and around the other piece, so one piece forms the floor and the other piece the curved walls and roof of the bandshell.

• 5.

  Stack Model Magic strips to make risers. Create tiny musicians and their instruments, seated on the risers. Air-dry your sculpture for 24 hours.

• 6.

  On a paper roll, create a 12-month timeline. Write each month along the line with Crayola Markers. Place the 3-D creations along the time line. Write details of each event on the timeline. Display your creation in a public building such as a library.

Benefits

• Students investigate events in their communities, compiling details about how, when, and where the events happen.
• Students work cooperatively to construct three-dimensional representations of each community event.
• Students produce a 12-month community event timeline display.

Adaptations

• In spring, focus on community events scheduled for the upcoming summer. Find out how children and their families might get involved in the events. Invite parents to form community involvement teams to lead groups of students in participating in community
• The school is the center of the community in many municipalities. Focus on school events that occur throughout the year. Identify months that have few or no events scheduled and think of an event your class could sponsor. Brainstorm ways to include the co
• Assessment: Before creating the community event timeline, children work together to construct a rubric outlining what an excellent, good, OK, and not-so-good display would look like. Invite children to use the rubric to evaluate their display when it is completed.