The Siege of Yorktown!

Last spring, we received a strange email from Nicholas' 4th grade teacher...something like; 'I appreciate your creativity and ambition, and you have my permission to recreate a 3-D battlefield of the Siege of Yorktown for your spring project'.


Needless to say, Nicholas has not shared such a vision with his parents, and most importantly his assistant in designing, building, creating, and finishing–his father!

Well, this was right up our alley.  Nicholas had checked out some books on the Revolutionary War from our local library, and we found a battlefield map that was perfect to use as a guide. Nicholas had initially chosen the Kings Mountain Raid, which happened in the mountains of both North and South Carolina (naturally that got dad's vote) and served as a huge confidence booster for the Colonials, but changed his mind to Yorktown. The Siege of Yorktown signaled the end of the revolution, thanks to some help from over confident British generals and the French forces (both land and sea) of Lafayette.

We had a massive piece of scrap MDF in the garage, and we got a recipe to make our own 'salt dough modeling clay'. We used it to make the terrain, and glued aluminum foil down for the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean. We painted the terrain green, with a mixture of some 'mix-your-own' red paint, and we painted the ocean/bay water area blue with some whitecaps for effect. We then painted the battle lines shown in the book.  We spray painted some good ol' green Army men for the troops; blue for us good guys and red for the bad guys.  We took photos of the national flags for the US, Great Britain, and France, and folded those around toothpicks to establish forces and nationalities. We also made a French fleet and a British fleet, complete with flags for identification. Can't forget the vessels - that sealed the deal for George Washington...

Finally, we placed everything on the board and hot glued it to the surface. Here's a look at the finished project...

And yes, he got high marks on this project...We're quite proud of this one!  Now on to shooting stars...