Building tiny town is big adventure for Cache students

LOGAN (AP) — For Sharyle Shaffer's fourth-grade students, a drive around town has been a little different in the past few weeks.

The kids have been paying special attention to shop doors, windows and roofs. The Summit Elementary students in Smithfield have been learning how cities are formed from a local architect and have put it into action by creating a mini-city of their own.

The class is one of four in the valley working on what's called a box city — a complete mini-city with buildings proportionate to each other. Each child in Shaffer's class is completing a building and three classes at Edith Bowen Laboratory School are working on the same project. In December, the city will be on display at the Cache Valley Mall.

"The kids have loved it," Shaffer said. "This is what they're going to remember about fourth grade."

As Mark Hernandez worked on his mini-bank Friday, he talked about how he has learned to design the projects and wrap the boxes up in paper.

"The coolest thing is learning about neighborhoods and how they're set up," he said.

Every Friday, Christian Wilson, of Architectural Nexus in Logan, has visited the Summit class to teach them about dimensions, measurements and how parts of buildings are designed. Over the weeks, the class has drawn up blueprints for their individual buildings and created things, like mini-grocery stores, apartment complexes, churches and fire stations.

"We've been learning about how to do our windows by scale," Chandler Beutler said while finishing up an office building.

Zak Thornley worked across the room on what will be the city's graveyard. That's slightly different than the other projects, but as Zak said, every city needs one. He'd finished making several headstones out of clay and was working on drawing a fence for the cemetery Friday.

The buildings can individually fit within a square foot of space, and most are smaller. Wilson said the idea was first developed in Salt Lake area schools, and this is Cache Valley's first year to work on the box cities.

"I like that they're thinking about what goes into a building," he said. "I want them to find that architecture and design is fun."

Shaffer applauded the activity's ability to help with problem solving.

"They've had to make choices and decisions," she said. "It's really helped with critical thinking."