This term, my daughter's school came up again with another midterm project- a matchstick collage. The sample provided for us was a fish made entirely of matchsticks glued together on a piece of cardboard.

As shown above, the instruction said: Mid-term Project: Make Match-Sticks collage of any drawn object. To be submitted on 24th February 2025.

And this project has the weight of 10 whole marks.

Creativity loading.---------------------99.3%

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The idea stage

I had many ideas to choose from, and having an endless list of choices can be frustrating and terrible at times. I wish they could simply say, draw a fish and make it easy for us.

A coconut tree came up after some consideration but was later replaced by the palm tree. The reason for the change is stated below.

Tools and materials

The cardboard will be the canvas while matchstick will be the medium. The matchsticks will be glued to the cardboard

Material	Quantity	Description
Cardboard	1	half a cardboard
Matchstick	5	Packs of matchsticks
Glue	1	small top bond
Rezor blade	1	for trimming
Scissors	1	for cutting
Pencil	1	for drawing outline

Procedure

At this point, the outline was ready, and the coconut tree was still the plan in motion. The outline will help guide where to glue in the matchsticks.

The midribs of the palm tree's leaves were the first to be glued on the canvas. It took a considerable amount of time to get it right.

It is now time for the matchsticks to represent the leaflets on the main midrib. Did you know that the palm tree is a monocotyledonous plant? And that all parts of a palm tree have economic value in Nigeria? We make local brooms out of the palm tree's leaflets by skillfully scraping out the blade from the leaflets.

Did you know that the number of leaves on a palm tree can be counted! It's the leaflets that would be difficult to count. Yes, palm trees don't have branches; those things are their leaves. In this picture, I am working on the second leaf now.

It was at this point that I realized it would be easier to make a palm tree compared to a coconut tree. I had to switch to a palm tree.

The match tips were used to create the palm fruits in a single bunch. It took less effort compared to making several coconuts on the tree.

Did I mention that palm oil is squeezed out of its fruits? The seeds also produce another type of medicinal oil when roasted. The shell around the seed has many industrial uses, or you may simply use it as a fuel to light up a local cooking place... and that is not all.

My daughter's teacher loved it. It made me feel my effort had yielded results. I just wish I did not celebrate too early, because the result is not yet out. But I hope to see something better than good.

This is where my palm tree matchsticks collage ends, but note that even a dead palm tree still has economic value. It can be logged into beams or planks for construction or burnt as firewood. If left to rot, it grows mushrooms, houses a proteinous lava and then breaks down into fertilizer.

Cc

@dequeen
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