Art teacher Manabu Takahashi’s Creative Design III classes are working on a semester-long project with Bell Prairie Elementary and inspired by The Rabbit hOle, an immersive museum meant to bring books to life.
“It’s a client connect project to do something that involves the feeder pattern elementary school so the fifth graders are going to get involved and choose their favorite children’s book that they want us to build and we as creative design artists are going to try and bring it to life,” Takahashi said. “They’re clients, and we are going to try to utilize The Rabbit hOle resource.”
The Rabbit hOle is a business in North Kansas City that was started by two people. They created Reading Reptiles mobile library — a program that brought literacy and reading fun to young people and the community.
“Rabbit hOle started out as a business partner but ended up being an inspiration for the project,” Takahashi said. “Some students will get to do the full life-size experience similar to the ones seen at Rabbit hOle, while other students will be making the miniature displays that are featured at Rabbit hOle.”
While the students are preparing for the challenging task they are also looking forward to getting the opportunity to do it.
“The Rabbit hOle project is an interesting way to get children more interested in art and design,” junior Jackson Brown said. “They can take the things they’re interested in, which are mainly picture books and stories and take them into real life, which gives them a tangible object to connect to.”
He said it made more interesting to children because it included art, design and drawing.
“Because they are physically there with the things that they grew up with, like, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and other children’s books,” Brown said. “I like the project a lot more than I thought I would at the beginning because of all the aspects put into it.”
The Creative Design III classes are working with selected fifth grade classes on the project, and the art being made will be displayed in the Bell Prairie Elementary media center for about a month after they are completed in May.
“It’s fun to pretend that we are going to create this for kids. I think that it’s going to be hard to build the actual room or demonstration of the book, but I think it’s cool how we’re going about it. I like that we’re going to have our clients, it’s a good real world example for going into this kind of stuff,” said junior Madison Carrington.
Takahashi said he encouraged his students to do their best.
“I would like to have the opportunity to continue for years to come,” Takahashi said. “That’s why I would like to maintain that positive relationship with Rabbit hOle and hope that we can continue to do the future programs.”
The Rabbit hOle project will provide these students with hands-on experiences that can benefit them in the future by teaching them skills they can use after high school.
