Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School News

You would imagine that when seventh graders at the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School were told they had to build model Greek temples they might be dismayed, but this was not the case recently. These Greek temples were special. They might be very similar to actual Greek temples existing except for their size, and the fact that they were made entirely out of food.

The project had been assigned. Students scrambled in their assigned groups to bring in the necessary foods, and on Wednesday and Thursday planned their edible masterworks: temples built in one of three orders - Doric, Ionic or Corinthian. Friday, the day the temples would be built, came fast.

The last two periods of building day were a mass of food, fun and mess. The temples, along with their materials, ranged from Corinthian garden shrines of Apollo to sturdy Doric sanctuaries to Athena Nike. They were made of everything from cheese, to broccoli, to pretzels. Dozens of strategies were used for bases and columns. Most bases were made of some sort of cracker, while columns ranged from celery to spaghetti noodles.

"It was hard to depict ancient Greek temples using just food, because it's hard to find some of the shapes used in ancient Greek temples," said 12-year-old Matt Costa. Bringing everything together was the job of one material that all students had to use: peanut butter. Naturally the mess was as big as the temples were imaginative.

Students agree that building the temples not only taught them a lot about ancient Greek architecture, but also the difficulty of constructing a realistic-looking temple. Thirteen-year-old Sylvia Tomayko Peters was one of those students.

"What I thought was really cool about the project was the idea that we weren't learning about temples from a textbook, we were making them hands-on," Sylvia said.

This kind of hands-on learning is very effective with the students and it is safe to say that next time they study ancient Greece, memories of pretzels, Ritz crackers, peanut butter, celery, teamwork and fun will come to mind.