There are few better ways to connect with your community than to build it. That’s one take-away for students and faculty at Montgomery Village Public School, after a group of Grade 1 architects collaborated to build a model of Orangeville as part of their year-end class project. “They each had their own little square that they built a 3-D model on,” explained Grade 1 teacher Dan Booker. “They built all the structures and trees for that square. … As we started adding colour and more things to our squares, it definitely shocked me.” Using Google Earth on their iPads and laptops, each student was responsible for completing his or her own piece of the grid. Most of the town’s landmarks, including Island Lake, Headwaters Health Care Centre, town hall and the Tony Rose Memorial Sports Centre are all there. “We used it (Google Earth) a lot to help them come up with their model,” Booker said. “That is what gave them an idea of how much green space there was, where there were trees, where the parks were, what they looked like, how big they were.” The project focused on brainstorming ways to help make the town more age-friendly. Through the school’s GrandPals program, which connects young pupils with their elders, the students consulted with a senior living at the Chartwell Retirement Residence in Orangeville. Earlier this year, Orangeville was recognized as an age-friendly community by the World Health Organization (WHO). After analyzing much of the data the town accumulated over the years, the students have provided some recommendations to Orangeville’s age-friendly task force. “Here are these little Grade 1s and they are reading graphs created from the data that was collected by the age-friendly council through surveys,” said teacher Marc Malihot, whose Grade 5 students publish stories about seniors through the school’s GrandPals program. “For me, the exciting part was to see how a younger grade can kind of access some of this stuff,” he added. “Thinking about our community and thinking about age-friendly issues.” It was interesting to watch his students grow more connected to their community as they worked on their respective squares, Booker said. Some kids would stop their peers at school to say: ‘Hey, I was in your square last night,’ he explained. “They really got a sense of what is in their community from this project,” Booker said, adding one student demanded his parents take him to every landmark within his square for a birds-eye view. “They had to go to the fire department. They had to go to see the community garden because that is what he was designing,” Booker laughed. “He made his parents drive him there to see.”