By request, a tour of Pine Hollow’s school.
Pine Hollow Public School is currently run by Aidan Smith and educates the teens and children of the Pine Hollow families. Original lot here.
On the first floor are the cafeteria, computer lab, and a small library.
The second floor houses the main classroom, art room, music room, and skill room.
Below ground, there’s a small auditorium where students can put on performances for parents.
The top floor was once the Smith family’s apartment, but is now empty since I moved them out and turned the school into a community lot. I think I’ll add in some exercise equipment up here to be used on days that students can’t go outside for gym class due to the weather.
There are enough teens and children now that they’re divided into different classes so they work in different classrooms during each period. Here are the teens working on some of their skills during their computer lab period (although it appears that Todd Gates is trying to cheat off Jessica Craig!). For computer lab, Monique’s computers are used and the students work on whichever skills they still need for graduation. Students need three skills at level 8 and a C or above average in order to qualify for college.
While the teens are in computer lab, the children are upstairs in the skill room. There are a few pieces of equipment students can use (or be instructed on in the case of children who can’t use the equipment yet). Children generally work on their logic skill with the chess tables during their skill time while teens work on anything that they may need to know in their future careers. The electronics crafting stations in the bottom left of the photo can be found at the Sims 2 Graveyard under the PCSims section, inside the business-type-stuff folder.
The music room attracts a lot of interest from the students.
There are also pianos on the other side of the room.
The classroom where they do their gradework is the students’ least favorite room. Classroom tables are from Inge’s school. That particular chalkboard is here, but there are several others you can find instead linked on this page.
Periodic table is found here.
The cafeteria is probably one of the most popular rooms in the school. Although today Nathan Gates is complaining to the cook about the day’s menu! The NPC cook on the lot is thanks to Inge’s Shiny Tyme NPC Everywhere patch. Very helpful, as I don’t have to worry about making Aidan get lunch ready after the morning classes. (I also use this in the retirement home.) The lunch menu is from here.
Side note – I love the drink and snack machines that came with AL! My townie teens that came onto the lot would never get the food that the cook left out, but they’ll buy from the machines, which earns a little extra money for the school.
Another view of the cafeteria on a different day.
Art class is also pretty popular among the students. They can either paint or work on pottery. Pottery table gives mechanical and creativity skills and pottery can be sold or kept. Table found here.
Students who finish their assignments early on classwork days can go to the library to read until the end of the period.
Outside, students can work on their physical health using any of the equipment. (The snow–and rain–are why I’m thinking of putting exercise equipment on the third floor now.) The basketball set, which gives body points without draining energy, can be found in the PCSims section of the Sims 2 Graveyard.
Second floor hall. I can’t remember where I got that particular bulletin board from, but this site has some others under their paintings section.
First floor hall. It seems that someone has left their trash by the front door!
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I’ve included some links to the things I use to run the school in this post. Students still go off to the Maxis school on the bus each day when I play their lots, but when I play Aidan’s lot I use Inge’s school hacks to run a playable school where everyone can learn skills. (Also, for children living on Aidan’s lot I use Inge’s school changer to set them to the Simlogical Flexi School so that the bus won’t come and then deduct grades from them for not going to school. This is important because I use the community time project to make my Sims not come back home immediately after being on a community lot for hours. So a child/teen that goes to school with Aidan in the morning will not appear back on the home lot until around 6pm that night.)
The school schedule is:
- Monday
- Class 1 (children) – Morning: Gradework, Afternoon: Art
- Class 2 (teens) – Morning: Art, Afternoon: Gradework
- Tuesday
- Class 1 (children) – Morning: Skills, Afternoon: Physical education
- Class 2 (teens) – Morning: Physical Education, Afternoon: Skills
- Wednesday
- Class 1 (children) – Morning: Gradework, Afternoon: Music
- Class 2 (teens) – Morning: Music, Afternoon: Gradework
- Thursday
- Class 1 (children) – Morning: Skills, Afternoon: Computer Lab
- Class 2 (teens) – Morning: Computer Lab, Afternoon: Skills
- Friday
- Class 1 (children) – Morning: Gradework, Afternoon: Physical Education
- Class 2 (teens) – Morning: Physical Education, Afternoon: Gradework
As I mentioned, students must have at least 3 skills at level 8 and a C or above average to qualify for college. If they don’t, they have no chance at the bonus $10,000 and extra badges/skills to jump start their adult life after finishing college. (They also need enough money to pay college tuition–either in savings or through scholarships–in addition to the skills and grade qualifications.)
I also use the Visitor Controller to set this lot so that only children and teen customers are allowed on it, so you’ll see townie teens wandering around the school whenever Aidan sets the store sign to open. It keeps annoying NPCs (like witches) and random adults off my school lot. (Random children never show up on my community lots on their own anymore. They used to, like I would see them playing at the park when I took other families there, but somewhere along the way they stopped. If I want children not in the current family to be on a community lot, I have to call and invite them or teleport them in. Is that something written into one of the EPs or could it possibly be because of a hack I’m using?)
The school principal/teacher’s salary is paid by the parents of Pine Hollow. Each household pays Aidan $50 per child/teen per day, using Monique’s automatic payment mod.
Some final school related hacks I use:
Edited to add: Be sure to read my comment below about making school objects usable on community lots! Not all of them are usable on community lots by default, so you’ll have to do some quick editing on them. But it’s really easy! 🙂
Man, I am still in awe. I can’t believe you manage this while also playing the hood! I could never do this, lol. I am too used to playing my sims like I used to play with my Barbies. Grand ideas in my head, but too scatterbrained to ever really stick to them or execute them.
Still, I love admiring those who can! What a neat idea. And it’s grown! Ahh, from humble beginnings…
HOLY SMOKES, Shana! This is freaking incredible! You’ve put so much time and effort into this. Man… my jaw drops!
I could never run something like this, I’m just not organized enough. It’s brilliant, though. I wish I had your skills for something like this.
LOVE IT. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT!!! Give yourself a brownie!!!
Thanks Shana now I’ll soon have a properly running school now !!!
That’s awesome, Shana! I definitely don’t have the…whatever is required to run a hood school. I think all the kids on the lot at the same time and trying to keep up with it would do me in.
How many students are there in total? Do you have townies come as well? Is there a limit to how many you can have?
Yey! I was waiting for an updtae about your new school. It looks awesome!
Did you have any problems with it though when turning the lot into a community lot?
Thing is, I also had to turn my school into a community lot but when I visited it with the teacher and enrolled the students again I couldn’t assign them into classes, because this option was not available anymore.
Thanks, everyone! I can’t take credit for the player run school idea, but I was inspired by other Simmers who have done it before me.
Running the school isn’t too hard, but I definitely don’t recommend it for everyone. You just have to figure out whether it will work for your play style and what you want out of your neighborhood. It can get boring sometimes!
Carla – Right now there are 4 teens and 3 children enrolled in the school. These are just the playable teens and kids. I also set the store sign to “open” so that townie teens will come onto the lot. There’s usually 3 or 4 townies wandering around each day and they’ll buy from the snack machines or play the instruments or the basketball game. Sometimes I create gradework for them so that they’ll come and work on assignments until their fun goes down too low. I usually just let townies do whatever they feel like though and focus on my playables.
Aili – If I remember correctly, some of the school stuff isn’t set up for community lot use. So even if you put them on the lot when it’s residential, they’ll no longer work when you turn it to a community lot. I used the Sims 2 Categorizer (found under Sims 2>Programs) to make sure all school objects were also set for community lots. I had never used the Sims 2 Categorizer before, but I remember that it was a really easy fix to do. Just find the objects to edit and make sure that they have a category selected under Community as well as Residential on the edit window and save.
Thank you for the tip! Tried it out right away and everything is working now:)
i really love the school!
wow thats a pretty cool school yeah i’ve got the school hack and its pretty much ok, though the kids and teens take AGES to settle down and get on…. oh well
i think that they will help my game a lot thanks