Kids create Box City at Hastings

In Kid City, all types of people are welcome, and that's just how the students at Hastings Elementary School like it.

In an effort to create a tighter-knit school community and teach Lexington students about urban life - something many of their classmates from Boston experience daily - the Hastings School spent the past two weeks creating a Box City. With the help of Learning By Design architects Jan Ham and Polly Carpenter, teachers, parents, and every student worked on creating the scale-model city made out of boxes and blocks that when put together on Monday, took up most of the gym floor at the school.

Second grade teacher and project director Barbara Lockwood said she thought the project was a great opportunity that would serve many positive purposes.

"I was interested in finding a project that would bring the whole school community together, and parents thought having the architects come in would be a great opportunity," said Lockwood. "I thought this would be different for the kids, and we tried to modify it for our community. We wanted to create an urban city because we have kids who come from Boston, and this was the first time some of the [Lexington] kids learned about urban areas. The kids have really gotten excited about this project, and they are interested in what it would be like to live in an urban place."

To help give students ideas about what they wanted their city to look like, Lockwood and fourth-grade teacher Nancy Alloway took their classes on a field trip that included stops at Copley Square, the Prudential Center, and Fenway Park.

"Kids that live in the city were proud we took everyone there, and it was something I think was especially pleasant to them. The suburban kids have now gone to urban areas and seen where [their classmates] live," Alloway said, after students looked at slideshow pictures from the trip on Monday. "I was surprised to hear how many misconceptions some of the kids had about the city, but after, a lot of them said they learned a lot from it. This kind of project benefits all students. It was a pretty amazing field trip, and it was inspired by this project."

Ham explained Learning By Design is a youth education program of the Boston Society of Architects, and she said the community-building project not only teaches students about architecture, but also involves the use of math, science, social studies, and art. In the past, she has worked with schools designing cities and building dream houses, Roman towns, and other structures.

"We come in, set things up, and figure out what grade level can build what. The kindergartners did row houses, first grade built homes, second grade did apartments, third grade worked on commercial buildings, and fourth and fifth grade did public buildings and churches," said Ham. "This project has been great because the teachers and parents put so much into it, and all 500 students worked on it. Everybody has contributed, and they really built a good city."

Fourth-graders Jamal Warner and Katherine Geldart enjoyed working with their peers to build Kid City.

"I learned you have to plan it out. You have to draw [a map of] the city and look back at the picture to see of something needs to be changed," said Warner. "It's a lot of hard work, but I learned a lot."

Geldart added, "You can't really do it all by yourself, you have to work with others. You have to think and draw it so you don't mess up. I learned there's a lot of people, lots of different races, and lots of different churches and temples in a city. It was fun to work with other people in my class, and I made two new friends. We built an animal care center because we all like animals."

Parent Jessie Steigerwald said Principal Lynne Stinson was instrumental in helping to coordinate work on the project with students and teachers. She was also grateful to the Lexington Education Foundation and to the school's Arts Created Together Committee for funding the project.

"This is great for everyone. Some of the teachers are doing math lessons with it, some are doing art. This was especially great given the cutbacks in art," she said.

Stinson added, "This is a fabulous project and everybody has learned a lot. This involved the entire school and every kind of kid, be it Lexington kids, Boston kids, little kids, or big kids."

LEF awarded $6,000 to Hastings to help fund the cost of materials and the Learning By Design architects. Peggy Shukur, LEF's vice president of programs, explained why the program was worthy of consideration for funding.

"We thought it was an innovative way to bring the school community together and it was something that would leave a lasting impression on the students," she said. "It was exceptionally well integrated with curriculum objectives and had a variety of activities that were appropriate for different grade levels. It both let students be creative and it did so in a creative way, because it's not easy to think up an activity that can be done by an entire school community from k through five, and this seemed to have something for everybody."

The Box City project was put together by the students on Monday and was open to the public for viewing Wednesday afternoon.

For more information on Learning By Design and the Box City program, visit architects.org/lbd.