The grade ones were working with Brooke Johnson, our Grant MacEwan student, to create a model of the Mars landscape. We had been reading about Mars, seen drawings, photos, and most recently images from the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. We used a recipe for playdough that is excellent for mapping, because it dries rock hard and creates fissures as it dries.

The photos will show you the process of this work, from our initial base work (too wet), to adding the canyons and mountains, to the final process of painting, and adding the figurines. The original NASA astronauts were modified to become Canadians by adding our flag.

You will notice that we completed 2 landscapes, one for the Northern Hemisphere, with Olympus Mons, and the other for the Southern Martian Hemisphere with its magnificent Valles Marinaris canyon system.