I’ve always thought that civilizations and empires in the past are fascinating. History was always one of my favourite topics, and it still is! As you know, my family and I have this tradition during Navratri Golu where we create a mini model of somewhere we have been on holiday. In the past years, we’ve done Switzerland, London, Bali, Paris and more. This year, we chose the heartbeat of old civilizations and empires: Ancient Rome.
We made models of several different places, and I'm going to explain each one of them to you. Firstly, one of the places we obviously chose to do was the Colosseum. Dating back over 2,000 years ago, the Colosseum was a massive arena in which they held gladiator fights and wild events. For our version of the Colosseum, we found a 3D puzzle from National Geographic, and my sister and I built it by ourselves. We didn’t usually do this aspect of the model, so it was definitely a challenge, but in the end it turned out to be really successful!
The next place that we made a model of was the Trevi Fountain. In my family, both of my parents as well as my grandfather have experience in engineering. However, it’s my grandfather who truly is a master at engineering. Every year, he creates some sort of water feature. In Iceland, it was a waterfall, and in Paris it was the fountains of Versailles. This year, he created the Trevi fountain. It was made completely from scratch, and I think it’s absolutely incredible! Making an actual fountain from styrofoam, a plastic container, a pump, tubes and of course, water! It’s truly incredible.
After the Trevi, we built the Roman forum, the heart of Ancient Rome. It was where public speeches, criminal trials and elections were held. We cut thick wooden sticks to make the sides and thin plywood rectangles as the ground. After that, we painted them grey.
However, one of my favourite places that we made was Circus Maximus. Circus Maximus was the place for chariot races, and the end result was really cool! We built stands from thick wooden sticks and made stages for the monarchs and aristocrats from styrofoam. We also bought metal chariots with riders and painted them different colours. I thought the end result was really attentive to detail, and I found it to be quite successful. Lastly, we did Mount Vesuvius. Although Vesuvius isn’t technically in Ancient Rome, we wanted to somehow incorporate it after we hiked it this summer.
My dad is the most creative out of all of us and he is the architect who plans the entire structure that we then execute on. This year, the entire project was a bigger challenge. In all of the past years, we used to do it with another family who we were very close to. We made all of our past models with them, so it was a different experience this year for us.
There was more work to do, and it just wasn’t the same without them. However, this also taught us to overcome more challenges, and try different things. You never know how something is until you try, and this experience really taught us that. We had to experiment with tons of different techniques, making tents from sticks and cloth, designing stands out of wooden sticks and making a volcano from cardboard, liquid clay and newspaper. These were all new things to us, and we just had to try it out and experiment.
The point is, the product turned out extremely well! I found this quote by Roy T. Bennet where he says “To learn something new, you need to try new things and not be afraid to be wrong” I love this quote, because it just reminds you of the importance of trying new things, and that it’s ok to make mistakes and mess up. As long as you learn from them, it’s alright. I believe that it’s very important to try new things and experiment, and I hope that all of you also practise that as well.
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