We talked about the parts of buildings and structures and the children drew and labeled houses. They've been working on drawing houses basically all year, so most of them turned out pretty well. We do a LOT of labeling and it's a great way to add some print to any type of drawing or art project. This project was done in a small group with my assistant. This child is in a group who is working on writing and reading syllables. (Notice the hobbit-like windows of this house.)
One week was devoted to learning about tools, so we made a graph of our favorite tools. It's important to me that my students get plenty of vocabulary in English as well as Spanish, so I make sure to include as many thematic activities as possible during math (which is taught in English). For this graph the children drew a picture of their favorite tool and copied the word. When the children make the graph themselves they are much more likely to utilize the graph during centers and at other times of the day. I hung this graph in our construction center and they counted and compared the tools to their little hearts' contents.
Here are some closeups of some of the individual tools. We've worked hard on learning to draw this year and I'm very proud of what they're able to do now that we're 2/3 through the year.
Also during our week on tools was this ever-so-fancy project I've decided to call "draw, color, label, and cut." I got the idea from a colleague and discovered there's really nothing you can't draw, color, label, and cut. This activity is great for a bulletin board or other display and gets the kids excited about labeling and cutting (because they're just not excited enough about scissors already, right?).
By the way, I highly recommend giving your students interesting tools that they can actually use, like levels and tape measures. Every year my students L-O-V-E using levels with the blocks and end up checking random objects around the room to see if they are level or not.
Here are a few more random activities from the construction month.
Nuts and bolts
Locks and keys (hey, it's construction-y!)
Toy screws and hinges, which just happen to fit perfectly on the backs of our shelves
So there you have it, a bunch of jumbled ideas for learning about construction. Next up will be transportation, and I will be more mindful about taking photographs this time!
