Marie Curie second-graders visit the Children's Museum at Saratoga

Marie Curie second-graders recently played the role of city planners at the Children's Museum at Saratoga.

The students visited the museum to take part in a program called "City by Design," which tied in nicely with the school's engineering magnet theme.

After exploring the hands-on museum, the students were instructed to design and construct their own buildings out of recycled materials. Once that task was completed, the students gathered around a large canvas that was divided into zones like a city grid. The grid included building zones, or classifications, such as industrial, commercial, residential and institutional.

The instructor described the different areas and discussed the different types of buildings or structures that the students were likely to find in each one. She then focused on each particular zone, and the students place their buildings in the one they felt their building belonged. Discussion followed as to why these buildings belonged or didn't belong in these zones.

At the end of the program, each zone was filled with the appropriate buildings and a "City by Design" had been created by the students. The students were then allowed to take their buildings home!

This was a wonderful learning experience for everyone involved and helped reinforce our engineering theme.

To view a photo gallery of the visit, click here.