We had a short week this week but it was definitely a fun one! We spent our time together continuing to explore blocks. This has also led us into exploring large buildings and skyscrapers. It started with the kids trying to figure out how tall they could build with blocks. This got us talking about cities and tall buildings. The kids really got into this. We talked a lot about the structure of buildings and the materials used to construct them. We discussed the importance of using materials such as steel and concrete. The kids also talked about the importance of having a sturdy base before you start building the skyscraper upwards. We did some experiments with blocks that made us see the importance of a solid foundation before building. Through some time building structures, we discovered that a small base means the skyscraper would fall over very easily.
To start our study, we found some pictures online that we liked and printed them out for us to study. We discussed similarities that we noticed in these buildings and also differences in their shapes and designs. We also discussed the process that a building goes through before it is actually built. There are sketches drawn, edits made, designs created on the computer, and a large amount of people to make it all come together. These pictures were used throughout the week as the kids did different activities such as building and writing/illustrating in their journals. We decided to laminate them so that we could keep them to refer to throughout the year during our time spent in the block center.
One of our favorite activities we did this week was experimenting with construction using different types of blocks. We divided the class into 4 different teams and created 4 different stations throughout the room. Each station had a different type of block. We used the wooden blocks, small legos, connecting tiles, and small snap cube blocks. Each team had 5-10 minutes at a station to work together to build a skyscraper. After the time was up, each team told us about their structure. We discussed how each team made their structure, why it stood firm or why it fell over, struggles and successes they had, as well as comparisons in size and shape. After each team spoke, we rotated each team to a new station to experiment with new blocks. We continued this process of constructing and discussing until each team has rotated to the different stations. I think my favorite part of this activities was the team building. We spoke both before and during this time about the importance of working together with others and what that looked like. We realized afterwards that when we worked separately it took a lot more time and our skyscraper didn't get as tall. But, when we worked together to build onto our foundation, we were able to build a much taller and stronger building. I was so proud of them! As the activity progressed, each team worked more closely together. Everyone had different design ideas and they worked together as they added each element to their buildings.
We also spent some time drawing skyscrapers during our writer's workshop this week. The kids incorporated some ideas from our building experiences to create their own version of a skyscraper. We talked about the importance of details when constructing a building and they definitely listened! These drawings were full of details. We saw buildings with many windows and doors. Some drew multiple buildings with the small buildings surrounding the larger ones. Some even drew trees, birds, and clouds to show us just how tall their skyscrapers were. The trees looked very small because the building was so big and the buildings were so tall that even the birds few beneath their tops! Some of the buildings also had lights on the top that would flash to warn airplanes that they were there. It was a lot of fun to see their imaginations at work on paper! We took notes of what they wrote about each building. I have added their words to each of their pictures below. Both the artwork and the sentences will also be adding to our hallway bulletin board.
We will be expanding on these drawings next week. They want to take their pictures and use them as a guide to build actual structures. We have started some of this already but it will be an ongoing project that I predict with last most of next week. They want to try to add every element of their drawing, including colors, so we will work on it as long as it takes! With this many buildings, we're looking for tons of cardboard and recycled items. If you have any cereal boxes, shoe boxes, egg cartons, paper towel and toilet paper rolls, etc, please bring them in! We'll take anything that you have laying around that you think might help us as we work on these structures. We're all so excited to see how these turn out!
I also want to welcome Daizah Green to our classroom! She is a USC student studying education. She is our new class intern for this semester and we are so excited to have her join our classroom family! She will be with us for half days on Wednesday and full days on Thursdays. Also, we will be welcoming a new student to our classroom starting Monday! Her name is Olivia. We have talked to the kids about ways that we can make her feel safe and welcomed in our classroom. They are very excited to meet her! We have such a sweet group of kiddos. I know they'll welcome her with open arms!
Love,
Ms. Rachael
Approaches to Learning:
- Show creativity and imagination using materials in representational play.
- Show ability to focus attention for increasing variety of chosen tasks and activities for short periods of time (10-20 minutes).
- Understand a task can be accomplished through several steps.
- Demonstrate an increasing ability to organize actions and materials in the learning environment.
- Demonstrate an increasing ability to follow through with tasks and activities.
- Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities and materials.
- Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.
- Demonstrate with adult guidance simple techniques to solve social problems.
- Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others during play.
- Interact easily with familiar adults by engaging in conversations, responding to questions and following direction.
- Combine some letters with pretend writing.
- Use drawings, letters, or words to create narratives about people and things in their environment.
- Represent familiar people and experiences through art and language.
- Begin to use classroom resources such as books, charts, photographs and graphs to gain information about topics of interest.
- Complete a thought or idea when communication with others.
- Carry out simple directions and directives.
- Begin to understand the relationship between oral language and written language.
- Use emergent mathematical knowledge as a problem-solving tool.
- Generate conjectures based on personal experiences and simple reasoning.
- Investigate solutions to simple problems.
- Organize and represent data with real objects.
- Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.
- Compare sets of no more than ten objects using the terms "more than" or "same as".
- Represent simple two-dimensional geometric shapes.
- Compare lengths of two objects
Working in teams to build structures with different classroom materials. Our builders showed strong team work and creativity...
As architects, our first step is putting our thoughts on paper. Here we are brainstorming and sketching our buildings. In the pictures below you can see what we said about each of our sketches...
"There are the doors and more doors. I have a road with cars and race cars. In New York." - Yishai
"I have windows and purple on it. I added some color and a door with a handle." -Harley
"It has one wall and one door. It has bricks that stick out of it that make stairs to get in." -Paxton
"It's made out of wood and bricks. And the inside has concrete walls and it has doors on each end. It has three windows." -Oscar
"It's the Eiffel Tower. It's a rainbow. It has stripes and the door is rainbow because I put stripes on the door. It's so tall that there is a pole with half of the light red and half of the light orange." -Sylvia
"The purple is a door. The squares are the windows. The zig zag is the stairs. On the top it is flashing." -Emma
"I drawed poles and lights on top and a airplane. There is swirls and dots and colorful zig zags. I did a stair and a door and polka dots.:" - Audrey
"First I drew the outline and the stripes. Then legs and ladder because the legs are so long you need the ladder to get to the door. I did twelve windows and it goes up twelve feet tall. The other one has shorter legs and zig zags for stairs. I made little people and a tiny tree and clouds to tell how high it is." - Sophia
"I made so many lights on top. People can live in my building. it has seven floors. It has two windows on every floor. The roof has hay so rain will not get in the build. It has my name on the building." -Yael
"I put clouds at the tops to show how tall it is. I put a sky. I put a little tree. I colored in rainbow. It has a door." -Callie
"It's at the beach. It has three lights at the top. It has one door and four windows." - Ellie
"It's a square with windshields. It has nine windows. It has snap parts for the airplanes so they know where they are going. It has so many lights." - Adam
