Lil Miss Annie Oakley

The entire 5th grade at Bailey's school had a very large project that they've been working on for several weeks. It involved picking a historical figure from U.S. History, doing a report on that person, creating a short speech about the most important details of that person's life, painting a large backdrop that best depicted the historical figure and then dressing as that person for what they called their Wax Museum. Bailey chose Annie Oakley. To come up with an idea for her backdrop, Bailey googled "Annie Oakley" images and found the cute one below. We decided to use the picture (minus the girl) as inspiration for her backdrop. Annie was a sharp shooter and was known for shooting 4-5 holes in a playing card before it could hit the ground (thus the reason for the cards in the picture). The backdrop was very large! It measured 6' tall by about 3.5' wide. It took us all day last Monday (it was due Tuesday), but we sure were happy with the end result! My favorite part? The queen. Bailey did her all by herself. Wow. And what do you think about the bullet holes in the cards? So cool. For the picture below I stood up in the computer niche and looked down at the banquet table to get it all in.

This is her costume. It looked very cute on her. But as old costumes usually go ... it was musty and Bailey hates musty smelling things. Haha. So she sprayed it with her Twilight Woods Bath & Body Works spray, which gave it a musty, Twilight Woods odor. Not great. :)

Here she is at the actual Wax Museum. All the kids had their backdrops put up, and then they stood in front of them in a pose. Each family was given 12 tickets to then pick which characters they wanted to learn more about. When we put a ticket in their container, they then began to talk as if they were the actual person, and giving the details of their life. Once the speech was done, the froze into a pose again, until the next person came along wanting to learn more. Such a neat way for them to learn about U.S. history in a fun way.

Some of the other historical figures that were there: Lucille Ball, Susan B. Anthony (Bailey's BFF Lauren was this), Bruce Lee, Amelia Earhart, Theodore Roosevelt, Martha Washington, Hank Aaron, Sally Ride, JFK, Paul Revere, Noah Webster ... so, so many. It was very cool.