The Speech Project

Kids and school projects, it's just the way it is. I can't recall how many school projects I have worked on with my kids. Everything from posters and dioramas to mini books they have written with full color illustrations! I have also been up till all hours of the night the night before these little beauties were due trying to help my child who chose to procrastinate.
This project took off on a whole different direction.

Hailey's assignment was to write an informative speech and do either a power-point presentation or make a poster but it must be able to be seen at the back of the classroom. We don't have power-point and Hailey was very much NOT interested in doing another poster. She emailed her teacher to see if she could do a diorama. He was excited by her ingenuity in thinking up another type of project but reiterated that it must be able to be seen at the back of the room.

Hailey chose the topic of "Light and Sound Technician" - due to the fact that she has worked with her Dad in this and finds it interesting.

My idea was to use a large box and some BBQ skewers wrapped in Aluminum foil to make a front visual of a truss and we would go from there with my craft staples of glue, construction paper and dress shirt cardboard. . . . I asked Kurt to help cut the big box in half because it was too deep . . . this wasn't good enough for Kurt. He had his own ideas. The cool thing about it was, for the first time EVER I didn't have to do a lot! Yippee!
There was going to have to be a complete replica of an actual stage . . . Mind you, this took TWO DAYS to complete!

Kurt is trying to center a shoe box lid for the main part of the stage.

Drilling holes for the dowels for the beginning of the truss system.

I am amazed at how good of a job Hailey did at building these trusses!

I asked her if maybe she still wanted to be an architect after all! She did all the cutting, fitting and gluing. . . quite impressive!

Kurt is out in the garage with these little wooden biscuit things shaping some speakers that are going to hang from the trusses!

Here he is spraying Hailey's truss setup with metallic silver spray paint to look like aluminum. It looked just like it! Even where Hailey used the hot glue on the edges gave it a soldered look.

Here is Hailey painting the speakers that will fly from the truss.

There they finally are! These are probably the only flying speakers that our friend Tanya won't be afraid of!!! Kurt is starting to install the "lights".

Wooden blocks made into Mains.

Lights are on and ready to go!

Here it is finally all finished . . .working lights, canopy, backdrop. Stage and drum riser have fabric skirting. There are toothpick mic stands and little wooden monitors for each musician!

You can't see that they also made a Monitor Board that sits off to the side of the stage.

Now where are those musicians . . . They are never on time!

Sure can't beat that with construction paper and BBQ skewers! It looks great! In case you wanted to know, Hailey and Kurt got an "A" on their project!