5-Day: How a House is Built

Mar 8, 2019
2 min read

Dear Families,

We hope you enjoyed the snow day on Monday – the children have loved playing in the new snow on the playground this week! Thank you for sending snow pants, boots, coats, hats, and mittens each day.

The children have been hard at work in our classroom Construction Zone! They have had many opportunities to build with a variety of new materials, including large cardboard brick blocks, architect blocks, straws and pegs, Duplo blocks, and popsicle sticks at the art table. Our meetings have been filled with rich discussion about all things construction. The class has expressed interest in topics ranging from construction trucks and machines, types of tools, building materials, such as brick and wood, and electricity…to photographs of famous structures, such as the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Pyramids of Giza, the Parthenon, Great Wall of China, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

We explored counting and number recognition by filling trucks with stones and finding the corresponding numeral. At the literacy table, children identified and painted initial letters in construction word cards, such as “N for Nails” or “H for Hammer.” At the art table, we carefully painted each letter for our dramatic play “Construction Zone” sign. On Friday, the children each created a block structure flat on a piece of paper. Next, they traced the outline of their design to create their own "blueprint." We are looking forward to exploring this concept further with grid paper and rulers next week.

After reading the book How a House is Built by Gail Gibbons, we discussed the planning and designing process architects and builders go through. Each child completed a project, designing the frame of a house using glue and large, medium, and small popsicle sticks. Look for our display on the bulletin board in the hall! Here is how they described their designs:

Madeline – I made my house.

Margot – It’s a car house.

Lucas – It has an overhanging roof so the snow will fall off.

Wren – I made my own house.

Marlo – I made an “A” house.

Connor – I made a rocket ship house.

Marie-Sophie – I made a boat house.

Ashwin – I made a rocket house; those are the wings. Those arms go “ding-ding” and do everything.

Minna – My house has wheels.

Alex – I made a regular house, it has some rocket boosters on it and some trees by it.

Nate – It has a flat floor attached to the roof - the roof is really close to the ground. It’s an energy gym.

Caleb – It can go underwater, float, and drive!

James – It’s a ladder house – a house that looks like a ladder.

Mia – It is an animal home – it is called Animal Farm.

Kaia – I love it! It’s so special.

Asher - It's a pumpkin house.

Reminders:

Spring Conferences will be next Thursday, March 14. We are looking forward to discussing your child’s progress and goals!

Donations of any construction materials, such as nuts and bolts, blueprints, Styrofoam, cardboard tubes or boxes of any size or other recyclables, for upcoming art projects would be greatly appreciated!

Kristi and Cathy