South Callaway Elementary School teacher Manda Wilmsmeyer taught fifth grade students about space in a creative manner.
Wilmsmeyer's classroom on Wednesday became a space-themed, transformation room as part of her goal to "try activities to engage the kids at the end of units," said Wilmsmeyer.
The activity was oriented to have students "... apply what they've learned in their recently completed space unit as well as put their math and reading skills to good use to escape the deep space chaos occurring in the classroom," according to a news release.
The classroom activity was designed to be like an escape room, which is a game of challenges in a themed room where each success leads to the next clue that allows one to finally "escape" the room. Above all, the classroom was never locked and the door was wide open throughout the activity.
One student, Landon Jones, 11, said "It was dark like a Halloween house, but didn't have all those scary things."
As they filed into the room for the first time, the ooh's and aah's flew which put a smile on Wilmsmeyer's face, who was there until 10 p.m., the night before setting it up.
The classroom looked like the solar system.
"It (the room) reminded me of my room where I move things and make it different from what it looked like originally," said Landon.
The new space the children saw was conducive to learning.
Remnants of a "meteor" were stockpiled in one area, a blanket with an image of the moon was hung up, star streamers were dangling from the ceiling and the light from the electronic chalkboard gave a star-lit-night level of ambiance.
The solutions to the challenges relied on almost every piece of decoration in the room.
The meteor remnants (pebbles) were to be given to Wilmsmeyer once the children found the closest located crater to Missouri on a map, which is off Virginia.
The hung-up moon was paired with hand puppets and a series of moon-phase pictures that had a riddle. The riddle's solution required the use of math to know "How many crescent moons does Earth have a year?"
Every second during the activity, the children were engaged and were learning.
"I didn't know it (space) was made of dark matter," said Landon.
Another student, 11-year-old Evalynn Sneller, was amazed at the level of math required for science. She was one of the few students to get past the moon challenge, which required dividing 365 by 27.5 to get 13.3, then multiplying by two to get the answer to the question posed earlier. When rounded the solution is 27.
"Not every teacher can do things like this," said Wilmsmeyer.
Some of her previous room transformations included: a body systems unit in which children dressed up in personal protection equipment, pretended to be doctors and learned about things like the digestive system; and a reading unit called "Reading Cafe" in which the classroom turned into a coffee shop and books were littered around the room for children to read.
"I want people to know there are teachers doing good things all the time," said Wilmsmeyer.