Middle school class designs, budget homes

BELVIDERE, Ill. -- If you've ever wondered how an eighth-grader would design a house, you might take a cue from students in Jan McMahon's classes at Belvidere South Middle School.

Their assignment: create a home with working lights from cardboard and furnish it, all on a $500,000 budget.

The four-room, cardboard creations ranged from small ranch-style to large two-story homes. Home prices ranged from $200,000 to $400,000, which included nothing more than a cardboard shell.

There were pink, bright blue, yellow and gray exteriors, to name a few. The homes had chandeliers, toilets, stoves, nurseries, music and family rooms.

"We learned houses aren't cheap, how to balance our money and how to use it wisely," Kristin Kieser said.

McMahon has for years used the hands-on approach in her science classes. This year, they incorporated textbook chapters on wiring circuits into their designs which, when completed, featured working lights that operated on batteries.

"You enjoy seeing the light bulb go on when the real light bulb goes on," said McMahon, a 14-year educator at the school. "We worked on these for about two and a half weeks. They learned about circuits and were having fun doing it."

This year, McMahon joined with student teacher Ryan Kufalk and incorporated math into the project. Each student group had to pay market rates for every item placed inside the home.

"I think what they learned was a lot more real-life mathematics, like using and balancing a checking account," said Kufalk, who will graduate next month from Northern Illinois University. "It definitely gave them an early, real-life touch of what it costs to furnish a home, and hopefully that will be reinforced in high school."

Paul McGinley said he and his buddies spent all but about $1,000 of their allowance to outfit a carpeted ranch home that included nearly every item their parents' homes would have, right down to rolls of toilet paper. They even had portraits of themselves on one wall.

"The toilet and toilet paper brought a lot of laughs," Paul said. "They all thought it was hilarious."

As others agreed, those are two items most homes would not be without.

"We started with a center wall," said Josh Shacklee, one of Paul's project partners. "And we added the carpeting, toilet and stuff from there."

About 150 students worked in groups of three to design homes.

"I really like the baby's room," Kelsy Schmidbauer said. "It's a lot more exciting to do this type of thing hands-on instead of reading it in a textbook."

McMahon agreed. Next up are mousetrap cars and designing a space shuttle as the school year winds down.

"Kids can get bored from textbooks," McMahon said. "This is about problem solving and how they can make that dollar go further. I have kids come back and say, 'I remember when we did that section on electricity or the one on mousetrap cars.' Some still have them."