Books
We borrowed a few books from the library this week about houses, combined with the classic in our collection, The Three Little Pigs. Our favorite here was If I Built a House by Chris Van Dusen. We had borrowed If I Built a Car during our C is for Car unit, and loved it. This one was just as creative and thought-provoking for preschoolers.
Letter H - Magnetic Pom Poms
We printed off our usual page from Shannon's, and this week Little M&M chose to use magnetic pom poms instead of dot markers.
Following a "Blueprint" - Lego Duplo Bricks
In a few of our house books this week, we learned about architects and how they create blueprints. I created this one for them to follow.
Here is Honey Pot building her H.
Then Little M&M gave it a try.
Building H's with Various Materials
We learned that houses can be made out of different things, called materials, and about the big trucks that are used on the construction site. I pulled out a few of the kids' toys, and supplied them with a few materials I had on hand. Then I asked them to build H houses out of these.
Here is Honey Pot building her H house out of sticks:
She pulled out some of the makeup sticks from her Aristocats party, so pardon the red "whisker" smears on her face!
After building an H she wanted to really build a house. It's hard to see here, but she actually built the whole foundation before adding the floor.
Always a fan of pretend play, her truck helped her the whole way through construction.
Little M&M had his turn building an H out of sticks too. First he build his favorite letter though, an I. Though he hasn't learned this one officially, he's been spotting them and creating them for months!
Here is Honey Pot building her H out of paper squares.
And then out of straws:
A few straws would do, but she wanted to use up every straw in the pile!
And here is Little M&M's much smaller H.
Once he finished this project, he decided to grab his scissors and cut up every single straw.
Wow.
Hammer and Nails - Carpenter Skills
We learned about carpenters and a few of the different skills they use while building a house. I grabbed the pretend nails, and had the kids hammer them into playdoh.
Grab your hardhat!
They loved this, and each did it multiple times.
Drawing with a Ruler - Architect Skills
We also learned about architects this week. So we practiced one of those skills, by grabbing our rulers and drawing straight lines. I provided dots as a guide so that their lines would resemble a house when they finished.
Honey Pot even drew windows, a door and a person!
Here is Little M&M giving it a try!
Shape Hunt
This idea and printable comes from No Time for Flashcards. It was a fun shape review, and had them searching the whole house. Right away Little M&M knew where to find a triangle, his pizza toy! And while we were there Honey Pot noticed the circular pan. So they colored in those shapes.
A square!
And this was a tricky one, but we did find a pentagon in our farm blocks.
Ta-da!
Paper Bag House Craft
We completed this fun craft by first painting our bags white. I love how they have two completely different methods. Little M&M was quick and painted from top to bottom. Honey Pot took her time, first painting the whole border...
And then filling in the middle with neat lines.
Once the paint had mostly dried, we drew doorknobs on our doors and bars on our windows.
Then we glued them onto our house.
Once everything was glued on, we crumpled up some newspaper...
to stuff the bag with, and we topped it with a roof! Honey Pot's became a haunted house, because as you can see, she drew a zombie, a ghost, a spider and a...
bat under the roof!
Types of Houses - "I Have/Who Has" Game
I had been seeing these all over Pinterest, featuring pictures and words to help kids learn their shapes, letter, sight words, etc. What a neat idea! So I created my own to help the kids learn about different kinds of houses over the years. I was inspired by the Gail Gibbons book we borrowed from the library. On the final page she lists a few houses from our past. We learned about log cabins, igloos, tipis, earth huts, caves, castles and even skyscrapers.
They had fun playing, and it was an awesome way to learn about these structures!
************************************************
