An Oak Harbor fifth grader took a school project to another level when his teacher walked through his diorama.

Taylor Guerra, a teacher at Oak Harbor Christian School, knew Ryan Zimmerman likes to fix and build stuff. But she didn’t expect that a few days after instructing her students to create a replica of a scene from the novel “Brady,” he would approach her with a unique proposal: building a three-dimensional, life-sized diorama with a computer and a virtual reality set.

Typically, dioramas are built inside of shoe boxes.

When she asked him if he knew how he would build that, Ryan said he did not, but he was going to learn.

“I absolutely believed him, because that’s how Ryan is,” Guerra said. “He’s a go-getter.”

Ryan, an 11-year-old who wants to become an engineer when he grows up, had previously built robots but had never created anything in a computer, especially not in 3D.

Nevertheless, the idea of a challenge seemed exciting and a great way to put his new VR set — which he received on Christmas — to use.

For five weeks, Ryan’s parents watched him spend hours watching and rewinding tutorials on YouTube and practicing by himself, creating blocks and shapes individually to build a home, furniture, people, plants and cookies on his computer and then wearing his virtual reality goggles to paint. After a lot of work, he was able to complete the project the night before it was due, he said.

His mother, Christina Zimmerman, said she appreciated Guerra’s openness to let Ryan try something new and different than what was originally assigned.

His father, David Zimmerman, said he was impressed with Ryan’s willingness to learn a completely new skill in a month. Zimmerman works as an engineer for the Navy, and recalled being a self-taught computer guy back when he was a child.

Though one of the characters in the scene is missing a head and the other is missing an arm due to an error occurred while transferring the scene from the computer to the virtual reality, Guerra and Ryan’s class were impressed with the final result.

As the teacher “walked” around the home, Ryan and his classmates could see what she was seeing in real time as it was projected on a screen. Later on, other teachers had fun exploring the home themselves.

“I was actually inside of his project, it was so cool,” Guerra said. “It was the neatest project I’ve ever had to grade.”

(Screenshot provided) Ryan Zimmerman, 11, created a 3D, interactive diorama based on a scene from the book “Brady,” by Jean Fritz.

Screenshot provided

(Photo by Luisa Loi) Ryan demonstrates how, without any prior experience, he learned to build each block and shape on his computer screen before transferring the diorama to his virtual reality set.

(Photo by Luisa Loi) Ryan walks around the life-size, virtual home he built for a school project.