`BLOCK KIDS' CONTEST GIVES PUPILS THE TOOLS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 9, 1993                   TAG: 9303090051
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CHARLYNE H. McWILLIAMS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
`BLOCK KIDS' CONTEST GIVES PUPILS THE TOOLS
Sixty workers recently donned hard hats and took to building skyscrapers, houses and castles.
What made the task even harder was that the construction was done without blueprints. To make matter worse, they had to design and build their creations with 100 small connectable plastic building blocks in 40 minutes.
The workers were fourth- and fifth-grade pupils at Forest Park and Cloverdale elementary schools in Botetourt County. They were participating in the first Block Kids competition, an event sponsored by the local branch of the National Association of Women in Construction to increase children's knowledge of the construction profession.
The construction industry will be facing a shortage of people interested in the profession by the year 2000, according to information from the association.
"The idea today is to plant the seed in your minds that you might want to be in construction," said Lisa Snow as she gave the instructions for the competition. Snow is chairman of the contest's organizing committee.
One reason those schools were chosen, Snow said, was because both were recently renovated and the importance of construction could be seen more readily.
Three prizes were awarded for top designs. The first-, second-, and third-place winners got $100, $50 and $25 respectively in savings bonds.
Jack Avis of Avis Construction Inc. and Mike Biscotte with Hayes Seay Mattern & Mattern Inc. architectural engineers did the judging at Forest Park. Joe Baker with Baker Brothers Inc., a construction equipment sales company; Al Soltice of Lanford Brothers Co. Inc., a highway construction firm in Hollins; and Marjorie Steffe of H.B. Ives Manufacturing Co., a building-materials manufacturer out of Connecticut, were the judges at Cloverdale.
Fifth-grader Anthony Andrews won first place at Forest Park for his "Italian Diner" creation.
He had a simple explantion for why he decided to build a diner.
"That's what I thought of when I saw the colors."
Kimberly Quesenberry, a sixth-grader at Cloverdale, won first place for her Marine biology lab. The facility was complete with solar panels to conserve energy.
After comparing the scores of the two pupils, Snow said they decided that Quesenberry will advance to the regional competition March 30.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB