Joe Kline / The BulletinTumalo Community School second-grader Avonlea Greco, 8, adjusts her model of a Ferris Wheel. The school hosted its own version of the 1893 World’s Fair last week, complete with costumes and souvenir postcards.

TUMALO — Ask any second-grader at Tumalo Community School and he or she will tell you: The Ferris Wheel debuted at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, along with Morse code and Juicy Fruit gum.

To cap a unit on engineering and simple machines, the students hosted their version of the World’s Fair last week, complete with period dress — top hats, floppy hats and drawn-on handlebar mustaches — and an exhibition of their own engineering marvels.

Each design had to incorporate at least two simple machines. Lela Powers, 8, designed a portable fair, a giant box that opens with the push of a button to reveal games and shops and rides. Somewhere in there was a wheel, axle, lever and wedge.

There was also the folding bridge, the people launcher and the floating restaurant.

“It’s pretty much a cruise (ship). I had the idea ’cause my mom wanted to go on a cruise,” said 8-year-old Ethan Eby, the restaurant’s creator, as Ragtime piano music played in the background. Elsewhere, students sold souvenir hand-drawn postcards to their parents.

As part of the unit, the students read a biography of George Ferris and gave presentations on other products and ideas first introduced at the fair — Ferris’ wheel, of course, but also brownies, and Gertie the Dinosaur, one of the first animated cartoon characters. (The 1893 fair is also notable for the assassination of Chicago’s mayor in its closing days, though the students skipped over that detail.)

For their final project, they built cardboard models of their own designs. Second prize in teacher Kirsten Black’s class went to Kahlan Starling, 8, and Josie Hopper, 7, for their design for a treehouse made of iron (or, in model form, two milk cartons atop a tin can).

Ainsley Larson, 7, and her partner created a Ferris Wheel with paper cups for riders to sit in.

“We tried to use an axle, but it didn’t work,” she said.

Still, it’s fun to build things, she said. Maybe she’ll be an engineer when she grows up. What would she build? “Maybe a real Ferris Wheel.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7837,

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