Back to School

It's that time of year again, for K-12 and college students alike. While crafting the dollhouse decorations below, I kept in mind what a 9th grader might be studying this semester: introductory art, biology, and algebra.

This is the YouTube video I followed to make the backpack and sketchpad. (See timestamps 2:20 and 7:23, respectively.)

My version of the backpack features several modifications to the original design, some accidental and others purposeful. For example, I didn't realize that the foam edging for the top part was too thin until it was too late, so I improvised by creating a roughly semi-circular hole with an X-Acto knife. Meanwhile, I deliberately added stuffing to both the top and bottom parts so that the other school supplies wouldn't disappear when I placed them inside the openings. As a bonus, the stuffing helped fill out the shape of the backpack, perhaps giving the impression that the miniature student is carrying more than meets the eye.  

Here's a side view:

For the sketchpad cover, I used a 4.0 x 2.5 cm sticker. 

I made the colored pencils using just toothpicks and permanent markers. 

The 1:6 scale index cards are from here. After printing and cutting out the templates, I glued each to a 1:1 scale index card. 

The legal pad and notebook sheet are also from Small Stuff's PrintMini. For the legal pad, I used a piece of brown cardboard as backing. Most of the handwritten notes are from the book Everything You Need to Ace Biology in One Big Fat Notebook, assigned reading for a student I've been tutoring this summer.

I turned the sheet of notebook paper into a graded homework assignment, featuring a few "solve for x" algebra equations. (Hopefully my answers are correct; I'm not a math tutor.) 

In high school, my favorite subjects were English and Spanish. What were (or are) yours?