A group of 13 Madison-area kids and their families replicated the International Space Station at Elver Park Friday, using over a mile of plastic tape, and spanning nearly two soccer fields.

The six families who participated in constructing the two-dimensional model are part of a network of homeschooled children and their parents in the Madison area. Each family chose sections of the space station to research and construct, and then made signs explaining their parts' size and function.

David Dexheimer, activity organizer and parent of one of the children participating, said the goal of the project was to teach the kids about how the space station works. He said he came up with the idea a few weeks ago by looking at a NASA educational website.

"I've always been into space stuff and so is my daughter," Dexheimer said. "This just worked into our curriculum well, in terms of all the math and science you need."

The families arrived at the park around 8:30 a.m. and started constructing the model with plastic barricade tape, secured to the ground with golf tees.

"It didn't really look like anything at first, but it started coming together once we started laying the tape down," said Mary Brackey, Dexheimer's wife. "It really gives you a feel for what astronauts have to do."

Eleven-year-old Vincent Bensch said the hardest part of the project was all of the research he had to do to figure out the dimensions for his sections of the space station.

"You can't imagine how big the parts are until you lay it out," said Bensch. "I imagine how hard it must have been to build the real thing not just using yellow tape."

Margaret Brackey, 10, said she liked being able to build the station herself instead of just reading about it out of a textbook.

"I like doing things more than reading," said Margaret. "I mean, I like reading, but it's more fun to be outside."

Jacky Jugenheimer, Vincent's mother, agreed that it was difficult to find specific dimensions for the space station, and said they eventually found blueprints of the station measured in millimeters, which they had to convert into full-scale size.

"I never thought about dimensions and what it took," Jugenheimer said. "That's the nice thing about homeschooling, you learn a lot yourself."

Brackey said that collaborative, hands-on activities like this one are common among the homeschooled families in the Madison area.

"Things like this give the kids an active role and active choice in how they want to learn about it," Brackey said."They come away thinking they want to do something like this again."

Most of the construction on the model was finished by noon, more than three hours after it had started.

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