Does it Look Like a Third Grader Would Get My Point?

Because That’s the Goal

                                  

Doyle Jones

English 1A

My cool little display thing is going to be set up in like a shoebox.  I am going to divide the box into halves with a barrier of sorts creating two separate cubicles in a way.  Then I am going to use these two halves to make my statement about bikes, the environment and your health.

So the first side I a m going to have look like a nice sunny day at what could possibly be a park.  I used green paper as the grass for both sides and I used blue paper on the background as my sky.  These were easy color choices because everyone knows that the sky is blue and the grass is green.  I have white clouds on the bike side and black clouds on the cars side.  These color differences are supposed to kinda get you to ponder as to why the cars side has black clouds.  Now as a little extra I added a bright yellow paper sun in the sky of my bikes side to show how it was just such a beautiful day.  For my person on the bikes side I used a clothespin that I added colored on clothes too to make him look like a fit healthy guy who has a dashing smile.  But in contrast on the cars side the person again is made of a clothespin but he has packed on a few extra pounds of play doh, mostly because he is lazy.  He can be seen outside his car with a frowny face.  I have used a toy bicycle as my bike because the very realistic bike immediately draws your attention unlike the bike I tried to make where you just end up guessing if it’s a bike or maybe a plane or it could even have been a house.  Now for the car I also used a car because I wanted to keep a balanced look on both sides but I wanted the sides to have major, major differences when you look at them.  And finally I have some dead tree branches being the car that look like they are dead trees and behind the bike there is a beautiful green tree that is just a branch with a lot of leaves that I borrowed for this project.

I was planning on this project being directed more towards kids than adults for a few reasons.  One kids are more impressionable and two, adults can figure this out for themselves.  So to help show how bikes can be better for us and better for the environment to a younger kid I went with the classic shoebox diorama project look.  I figured if I could fit in with them they would understand better. That is how I chose the majority of the materials I used.  I kept in mind the whole time that I was making this project that I wanted it to blend in if I were to set it in with a bunch of kid’s school projects.  So colored paper as the background and grass was an obvious choice.  I thought basic school stuff for the people in my project and it hit me. Clothespin! That would make the perfect person and if you just simply add play doh you have your fat guy.  Now like I said before I failed miserably at making a bike out of wire.  I held a pole among my friends to see if they could guess what it was and no one actually guessed bicycle so it was at that point that I decided to use a toy bike.  I felt a little guilty at first but then as my project got more and more finished I loved how it looked like it belonged in a little kids’ classroom.  To keep my project looking balanced I added the toy car so one side didn’t differ too much from the other except in the areas where I was wanting to prove my point.  Then the trees.  I didn’t want to use pipe cleaners or more paper for the trees so I decided I would just hot glue some little branched of real trees in there instead.

I am really hoping that this project will help get the message out there to kids that riding bikes is not only fun and enjoyable but also great for you and the environment.  By riding bikes there are less cars on the road and that in turn means less pollution.  Riding a bike can make you feel so much better too.  Also it can help you get into shape and riding a bike saves you money over driving a car.

            I feel like my display really closely relates to the one picture I used which was a picture of a car and a bike and above the bike it said, “this one runs on fat and saves you money” and above the car is says, “this one runs on money and makes you fat”.  This is really close to the message I’m trying to get across that one is better for you than the other one is.

I had a few challenges along the way one of which was trying to make my own bicycle.  That one ended up pretty badly.  Another challenge I had was trying to keep it looking like a kids project and not to go way to over the top and have it be completely obvious that I was the kid whose parents did the entire project for them.  But other than that I would say that the project went pretty well.