Building Strong
12/2/2017
This week we investigated the questions "what are buildings made of?" and "what makes buildings strong?" We read "The Three Javelinas" (and other three little pigs books) to start thinking how different building materials affect how sturdy a building is. The students got to try their hand at building their own house out of a variety of materials and then seeing if it withstood the big bad wolf (a hairdryer)! After this we read books about how buildings are constructed and looked at the building materials used. We explored the building materials in our collection and put a sample of them to the hair dryer test; seeing which items stayed in place. Our next experiments centered on how the design of buildings determined their strength. We used small wooden unit cubes to see how tall we could build a tower. We discovered that a large, flat foundation was necessary to build tall. Our students also discovered that stacking the blocks straight, using a pyramid design, and reinforcing with support blocks all helped to create a sturdy tower that could be made taller. Using plastic cups, cardboard, and toilet paper tubes the students further explored tall building design, engineering many different structures that could support multiple levels. Finally we looked at blueprints, and talked about how architects and engineers use this design knowledge to create building plans for actual buildings. We drew our own blueprints, then combined all our ideas into one big blueprint of a building we wanted to build with boxes. We will be working on this project with the Beginers to create a large box building that the school can use for class meetings and story times. We are excited to have this opportunity to share our building learning with our school. Our EK Explores brought in over our quota of green bean for the Thanksgiving Blessing! As a reward, we were able to play on the large snow pile by the back hill. They loved the climbing and slipping and sliding. This week they also really enjoyed our sand table construction zone, new painting easels, and porcelain tile samples.
And of course Friday's Concert was wonderful. I am so proud of all our explores. Getting up on that big stage and singing for everyone. They did so well! Comments are closed.
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April 2021
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