STAR JOURNAL REPORT

Crescent Elementary CHAMPS hit the road recently for an educational road trip.

Students visited both the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum and the Wausau West Planetarium.CHAMPS stands for Community Helping Afterschool to Mold Positive Students.

The spring exhibition at Leigh Yawkey, a highly regarded free museum in Wausau, was of the photographic illustrator, Walter Wick. Walter Wick is best known for his search-and-find Scholastic books, which the students researched before visiting the museum. Wick creates elaborate sets and models that are filled with toys, machines, fairy tales, and optical illusions. The enticing looks of Wick’s photographs are the result of several detailed processes working together to create a single image. As the students learned during their visit to the Art Museum, Wick’s illustrations involve the efforts and talents of multiple people working together in a studio to develop and photograph Wick’s intricate scenes, encompassing small-scale models resembling movie sets. It was a challenge for children and adults alike to keep their hands off!

The Wausau West Planetarium exhibition was about the moon and its influence on the Earth. The students also learned how to find the North Star and learned a few of the constellations and the story behind each. They were able to lay back, see a meteor shower and watch the movement of the stars as they cross the sky throughout the seasons.