Challenger K-8 cafeteria comes to life with history
SPRING HILL — People entering the cafeteria at Challenger K-8 School of Science and Math on Thursday afternoon were greeted by a slew of famous faces, from Princess Diana to Leonardo da Vinci to George Washington.
The historical figures were portrayed by more than 120 second-graders who created a “living biography museum.” With parents and siblings in attendance, the cafeteria was packed with hundreds of people.
Positioned near the cafeteria’s entrance, second-grader Wyatt Crowder instructed passersby to press a red button on the cardboard poster through which he’d stuck his head.
A parent pressed the button and Wyatt began to talk.
“My name is Leonardo da Vinci,” he said. “My famous paintings are the ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘The Last Supper.’”
On the table before Wyatt, an illustrated time line detailed da Vinci’s accomplishments as an engineer, inventor, writer and anatomist.
“In 1472, I was accepted into the painters guild of Florence,” Wyatt said. Second-grade teachers at Challenger devised the interactive project about a month ago, said teacher Rita Spillers.
“We wanted a project they could show with their parents,” Spillers said. “Most of the projects were done at home.”
Wyatt’s mother, Kim Crowder, said he was inspired to do the project on da Vinci after the family visited a da Vinci exhibit at the South Florida Museum in Bradenton.
“He really enjoyed that,” said Crowder, a substitute teacher at the school.
The students did projects on a variety of figures, including Egyptian ruler Cleopatra, Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, aviation pioneer Orville Wright, former U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, author Laura Ingalls Wilder and famed wild west gunslinger Phoebe Ann Mosey, better known as Annie Oakley.
Some students dressed as their subjects. A student portraying George Washington wore a white wig, while a girl who studied Pocahontas, the American Indian woman said to have saved the life of Englishman John Smith in the 1600s, wore her hair in long, dark braids.
Noelle Marzan did his project on Daniel Hale Williams, a black physician who performed the first know open-heart surgery on a stabbing victim in 1893.
“We saw a documentary about (Williams), so when the teacher gave the assignment, we wanted to choose someone that not everybody would know,” said Noelle’s mother, Ileana Marzan.
Landon Acevedo chose Alexander Graham Bell as his subject.
“I learned about him last year,” Landon said, adding that he liked the look of “old-fashioned phones.”
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