February Study: Buildings Pt. II

March 03, 2026

February Study: Buildings-Part II

Once again, our month was filled with snow, two-hour delays, and virtual learning! It's made it a little difficult to get through the building study, but we continued on!

Week 3 of our study looked at what makes a building a building and the materials used to make them. We talked about why we need windows in buildings, why they have a roof, and why the foundation needs to be made out of concrete. We read some great books like Building Our House and went back to the versions of The Three Little Pigs to talk about why each house fell down. We also built towers out of different materials to see which one was the most sturdy or would make the tallest tower. The children really loved doing these different investigations and experiments. I find the more open-ended questions I ask, the more complex and deep their learning goes.

In week 4, we talked about what makes our building-Frankie Lemmon-so special. We did an investigation where we walked around the school to find out how many classrooms we had. We talked about the difference between classrooms and other spaces and what we call each space. Then we made a graph to determine which kind of room we had the most of. Towards the end of the week, we looked at other schools on Google Earth/Images that some students might be attending in the fall. How were these buildings different from our school and how might they be similar?

In our final week of the buildings study, we talked about what happens in different buildings. This was an especially fun week! We talked a lot about environmental print, logos and signs that we see throughout everyday life that we can recognize without necessarily reading and how that tells us about what each building is. They clearly knew what the big, yellow M along the highway means, but we also looked at stores like Target and Walgreens. Then, we used Google Earth to explore the neighborhoods around Frankie Lemmon. The map told us what kind of building was there with a symbol and then we could talk about what happens in each building. We explored churches, WakeMed, Food Lion, and more. We also got to talk about who works in each building and why those jobs are important in our community.,

We really loved learning about buildings together over the last few weeks. I truly feel that the children have a greater understanding of the places around them and why they matter. Next, we will be learning about pets ant they are already so excited!

Jae'Shawn was making buildings with magnetic letter tiles.

On Valentine's Day, Niko graphed how many candy hearts were in his box.

Averie really enjoyed our cupcakes on Valentine's Day.

Thanks to your donations, Carly and the other children were able to make patterns with their fruit kabobs.

Hendrixx and Sebastian were working together to make a building in dramatic play.

Just one of the amazing structures the students built in the block center this month!

The snow didn't stop us from learning more letters in Letterland! We powered through with letters O, D, V, and J. Recently the students have really enjoyed writing the letters as well, so please encourage them to do that at home as well. I think they are getting excited about writing more words as well, so please let me know if you would like any resources connected to writing.