NORTH PLAINFIELD — Welcome to "Science City."
The mock metropolis is a place that comes complete with mass transit, a hospital, museum, cinema, park and a forest. Built inside a cozy school auditorium in North Plainfield, its residents are scores of rambunctious children.
For the past week, 250 students at the private Sundance School have been roaming around their indoor city and playing with exhibits set up in each landmark, created as part of a learning fair — called a "happening" — held annually by the school.
There’s the Museum of Natural Mystery, featuring inventions designed by the students, and the City Cinema, where students can create their own silent movies.
A subway train, crafted from particle board with lights strung along cut-out windows, recreates the sensation of zooming through underground tubes, while the hospital’s main entrance requires kids to crawl through the mouth of a giant face.
To the children, the tiny city is larger than life.
"I don’t know how they did it all," said third-grader Ashwin Sanjay, who was fascinated by the detail of an outdoor landscape decorating a corner of the auditorium.
The secret of how they did it can be found in a crew of parents and teachers who volunteered more than a week of their time to put up the displays, said Sundance co-founder Ginny Tobey. They’ve added details such as a city skyline decorating a wall and New York transit cards for the subway.
And teachers must get in character for the exhibit under their charge, such as Agnes Arakelian, who donned a rainbow-colored outfit and wig for her exhibit on light.
The "happenings" are two-week events that have been held at Sundance for nearly 30 of the pre-K-5th grade school’s 35 years.
While it’s been around for decades, the event is blossoming in its sophistication, Tobey said.
Rapidly improving technology now makes it easier for students to gawk at the germs on their hands, to star in silent films, to pick out constellations in a faux night sky on a darkened stage.
What makes this event work, Tobey said, is the presentation. It might not be big-budget, but it’s important to make it look that way.
"We want them to see that learning is fun — that learning is cool," Tobey said.
The props and sets were slowly pieced together in the years since the learning fair’s early days, when the so-called happenings involved several classrooms and low-tech demonstrations, Tobey said.
The sets and props are stored off-site in a barn, Tobey said, so the school now has a collection of exhibits. Some years, there’s a "Westward Ho!" event focused on history. Other years, it could be a mock rainforest that takes over the auditorium.
"Changing the theme keeps things fresh not just for the students, but for the teachers, too," Tobey said.
On Tuesday, Sarai Adams, 7, received a crash course in acting for her silent movie. The girl relished the chance to play both heroic and villainous roles, and she learned that movies were once silent because of limited technology.
Putting that old-time technology into terms the denizens of Science City would understand, Sarai noted: "They’re kind of like a flip book, except you’re not flipping pages."