Lydia Hall (right), a 7th grader at Spencer County Middle School, presents her project to Josh Long (left), a builder at Grace Construction. Photo by Fiona Morgan, Kentucky Department of Education, March 20, 2026
(TAYLORSVILLE, KY) – Spencer County Middle School students showcased their math skills when they presented models of their dream homes during the Dream Homearama event on March 20.
Thomas Steele, a 7th-grader at Spencer County Middle School, built a model of his dream home using cardboard. His home is two stories with four bedrooms, walk-in closets, a wraparound porch and carport.
“I liked making it and seeing what the price would be to get me prepared for the future and find a good job,” Steele said.
Steele said his dream is to be in the NBA or NFL, but if that doesn’t work out, he said he wants to be a welder or engineer so he can build his home himself.
The Dream Homearama event was started by Michelle Gross, a math teacher at Spencer County Middle School and the 2026 Kentucky Teacher of the Year.
Gross started the project about 10 years ago, but it did not begin with students building houses. Gross said it started to teach students how to draw blueprints so they could better understand geometry concepts.
“Geometry just takes a different side of the brain, and sometimes kids struggle more to connect with it because it’s conceptual understanding more than visual learning,” Gross said. “So I wanted to provide a project for students that they could connect to.”
As the project evolved over the years, students started building models from their blueprints. A few years ago, students began presenting them to community members in the Louisville area. Local professionals, including realtors, construction workers and architects, came to see this year’s student projects on March 20.
Even though Gross is on sabbatical this semester for her Teacher of the Year duties and the project for her 7th-grade math class has been led by 7th grade Math Teacher Kabrel Woods, she has been checking on her students throughout the semester as they worked on their models.
To make blueprints, several students used Tinkercad, Minecraft and Sims, while others used Floor Planner, which is an architecture website where people can plan the interior of their home. About a third of the students presenting built their models out of materials such as cardboard, wood and popsicle sticks.
Charlie Robertson, a 7th grader at Spencer County Middle School, made her detailed dream home out of popsicle sticks and small decorative items. Photo by Fiona Morgan, Kentucky Department of Education, March 20, 2026
Lydia Hall, a 7th grader, built her dream house out of wood, which she has never worked with before. Hall said this project taught her that she can use math in real-world settings.
“This year has helped me love math more, including this project,” Hall said.
Hall, who wants to be a cosmetologist, planned a beauty room in her dream house. She wants to live in Spencer County on a property with at least two acres of land, but that’s also near other houses.
As part of the project, Hall calculated the cost of her house to be $653,113. To get this number, she looked up the cost of three houses in the area she wants to live in and calculated the average costs of those home.
From that cost, she estimated her down payment and mortgage. Her home square footage is 3,287 square feet and it has four bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms.
She created a digital blueprint in addition to drawing a physical blueprint, and as part of her presentation she showed inspirational pictures of what she wants her house to look like inside. Hall said she enjoyed being able to build the house and design everything herself, while also being able to plan for her future.
Madison Allen, a 7th grader who created a blueprint for her dream house, said she enjoyed learning how the math she learned in class can be used in the real world.
“It was a fun project and a better way to understand these kinds of things, because these aren’t new concepts to us, but it was more in depth. We actually put it to the test,” Allen said.
Josh Long, a builder with Grace Construction, has been coming to the event for at least five years, and said the students’ confidence level increases every time he attends.
“I ask questions to make them think and talk, and tell me how they came up with something,” Long said. “For them to come up with this from scratch and some of them with no background at all, it’s pretty amazing.”
Long is building a Homearama house this year for the official Homearama event in the greater Louisville area. Long will be building a custom home for a buyer and showing it as part of the Homearama event this fall. Gross said her Dream Homearama event was inspired and named after that Homearama event.
Long said he always tries to reassure students who are nervous to present their houses in front of people, but now he understands the pressure some students feel. He said the kids are like “rockstars” now with their level of confidence.
Sandy Clevenger, a member of the Spencer County school board, has been attending the event for at least five years and said the students have become more engaged every year.
“Students are more aware of what they’ve actually learned, and taken home with them from this project, and the fact that maybe they knew some of the skills on paper, but it’s different knowing the skills on paper and applying them in real life, and that just brings a whole different dimension,” Clevenger said. “It’s about creating a memory with hands-on work, and that memory stays with them much longer, and these are things they’ll use the rest of their lives.”
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