We used real tools for drilling, hammering, sanding and screwing pieces of wood...
After reading Building a House
and Jack's House,
we sang the song, "When I Build My House" and talked about the things we would need to build a house.
and When I Build With Blocks,
helped us to realize that we could build anything and that many of our structures and materials are similar to real architectural masterpieces built around the world.
Using toothpicks, with gumdrops as connectors, we created structures in such a way as the Montreal Biosphere in Quebec, Canada was created.
After reading Iggy Peck, Architect,
we tried our hand at planning buildings just as an architect might, just like Iggy Peck, with graph paper, pencils and rulers in hand.
Who knows? We might have some future architects in our midst!
Bridges are to Cross
and Cross a Bridge,
showed us some amazing bridges that have been built all over the world.
We crossed over a bridge we made with a board and two stools. We sang "London Bridge is Falling Down" as we crossed over...
Human beings are not the only ones who build. Animals do as well. We read, And So They Build
and talked about what and why animals build.
Get Busy Beaver
and The Very Busy Spider
were fun books to read about animals building their homes. When it gets warm outside, we're going to try building a beaver dam. We did make our own spider web of yarn throughout our play rooms and crawled under and over the giant web.
We found out we could even build with our snack!
Cheese cubes and pretzels make for some great structures...
One of our favorite stories of all times involves building- The Three Little Pigs!
We read it and talked about which little pig made the best choice and then we used stuffed animals to create a puppet show...
It was a definite hit!
Off to Broadway we go...
Using collage materials of straws, sticks and bricks (and some added flowers in honor of the book, Three Little Wolves and the Big, Bad Pig)
we designed our own houses.
Building with different materials helps us to build strength in our finger and hands. Figuring out what fits where helps us with perspective along with balance and stability. A lot of cooperation and problem solving went on as well. We created structures of our own design and used them for pretend play. Telling what we made encouraged language.
And you thought we were just building...
