Ridgeway Community School's World War II History Project Fair Open House hs been postponed to Tuesday, March 11th from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. due to the March 5th winter storm which impacted th student's final preparations for the event which was originally scheduled to take place on March 6th. The World War II Project Fair is being put on by the school’s 4th and 5th graders as the culmination of a month-long interdisciplinary unit on World War II. In addition to studying World War II during their social studies classes, the students have been reading novels and picture books set in the World War II Era, such as "Snow Treasure," "Number the Stars", "Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes", and "Luba: the Angel of Bergen-Belsen".
The students also had a presentation from Denise Rostad, the daughter Mary Rostad (a.k.a. Squirrel) a resistance worker in Belgium and France who married an American soldier after the war and settled in Houston, Minnesota. Denise told the students about her mother’s involvement in the resistance movement and how she moved about the countryside carrying messages to others in the resistance. A number of the students also read the book about Mary’s life called "Squirrel Is Alive: A Teenager in the Belgian Resistance and French Underground", and one of the students will be portraying her during the history fair.
Each of Ridgeway’s 4th and 5th grade students have researched an individual, such as Anne Frank, or cultural icons, such as Rosie the Riveter, who lived during the Second World War. The individuals selected by Ridgeway students include political leaders, American soldiers, nurses, spies and members of the resistance, holocaust victims, and other famous researchers and people from the era. Visitors to the open house event will get to ring a bell placed by each student to request they tell about the life of the person they are portraying, much like a living wax museum. Two students will be portraying great-grandparents who served during the war. Some of the other men and women being portrayed include Josephine Baker, Yogi Berra, Albert Einstein, Queen Elizabeth, Anne Frank, Joe Louis, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Eleanor and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Sadako Sasaki, Sophie Scholl, Jimmy Stewart, and Chuck Yeager.
During this open House Event, Ridgeway Community School will also have information about their FREE Kindergarten to 5th grade education and enrichment programs. Tours of the school will be available from school staff members.