January Study: Buildings

 

January Study: Buildings

Happy New Year! We hope you all enjoyed your holidays with family and friends. It was nice to have some time off, but we were definitely ready to see our Bananas again! For January, I really wanted to dive into one of our Teaching Strategies Gold curriculum studies; something that takes a broad topic and investigates it more deeply week-by-week. We have a very creative group of creators and builders in this classroom, so I figured the buildings study would be perfect. 

The block center had lots of different building materials, such as hollow blocks, small blocks, and MEGA blocks. They also had construction vehicles to help in their projects. We put out pictures of famous buildings around the world and ways they could copy them with the blocks in this center. The dramatic play center became a construction site! We used real tools where we could, had an architect station for planning, and lots of boxes to help create lots of different structures. The other centers focused around our building study, as well. This included building with plastic cups in science, making block patterns in table toys, and matching letters with nuts and bolts. 

The first week of the study always looks at what we know about the topic and what we wanted to find out. We started by defining what a building is; walls, roof, doors, windows,, etc. and why each of those features is important. We looked at our own school building and named the different materials that were on it and why those may have been chosen. The children loved reading The Three Little Pigs and talking about why each house did or did not fall down. We even were able to act it out and I wish you could hear the squeals of laughter of these kiddos as they "huffed and puffed and blew the house down". 

The next week of the study looked at who builds the buildings and the tools they use. We got to read about construction workers and all the different roles they can have, such as electricians, plumbers, and masons. We looked around our classroom and talked about what kind of workers completed each part of the building and why those parts are important. This also led to great discussions about what we want to be when we grow up. Let me tell you, your kiddos have some grand plans and they are going to change the world! 

This month was of course filled with some snow and days off of school, so we didn't get through the whole study! We will continue learning about buildings and diving deeper into this study in February.

We made a collage of buildings by trying to find pictures of buildings in magazines.

The most popular item in centers has definitely been plastic cups! They love stacking and building with them. 

Carly is planning out her building in dramatic play.

Hendrixx and Sebastian were rolling dice to see who could build the tallest tower in their cities.

We continue to move through Letterland. This month brought us letters C for Clever Cat, T for Talking Tess, and Y for Yellow Yoyo Man. We are working hard on students recognizing that there is not an 'uh' sound at the end of letters. For example, when making the sound for T, we just make a short /t/ sound, not /tuh/. This helps when it comes time for reading and blending sounds to make words. Check out the videos below to reinforce the learning at home! 

Thanks so much for all you do!

🍌Miss Susan . Miss Tia . Miss Carolina 🍌