School

Capetown Creative Minds Academy (CCMA)

Miniature #19 – Constructed 04/2024

Fun Facts

Researchers find that a true small school thrives with fewer than 250 or even 200 students. When schools are genuinely small, students tend to perform better academically and feel more connected to their learning community.

In small schools, students are absent less frequently, drop out at nearly half the rate, achieve higher GPAs, and improve reading scores significantly compared to large schools. Safety is also enhanced in smaller settings.

Each small school develops its own unique culture. These cultures often revolve around hard work, high aspirations, respect for self and others, a sense of belonging, and the expectation that all students will succeed.

Description

The Capetown Creative Minds Academy, known as CCMA by students and town residents, “anchors” students with a solid education, strong value system, and the belief that with hard work you can achieve anything.

Building the CCMA gave me the opportunity to learn more about roof types suitable to a small-town school. I studied and created a complicated roof design beyond anything I had previously created. The roof architecture I chose for the school was a “Hip Roof” with an attached “Gable Roof”, known in the roofing world as a “Half-hipped Roof”.

The school sits on a 12″x12″ plywood base. The overall piece stands at 10.5″ high and the time invested to design and build was approximately 65 hrs. The complicated roof design required a number of hours of study and geometry to design and blueprint. Shingling the roof took 8 hours. I was pleased with the realism of the outcome.

Materials Used

The school was constructed with popsicle sticks attached horizontally to a frame of 2mm thick craft plywood. The exterior of the building was painted with watercolor paint with the intention of giving it an old red schoolhouse look. The trim was painted with acrylic paint.

Plastic sheeting was used for windows. The interior school window shades were closed for summer break preventing a look inside. The front and back doors were stained a Golden Oak color.

The roof shingles were made from black cardstock paper, sprayed with textured spray paint, and cut by hand to resemble realistic roof shingles.

The plywood platform was covered with Vallejo dirt and trees.