The possibility of a building project began by following children’s interests and things they noticed and pointed out during walks around the neighborhood. This included different types of buildings and specific details of these buildings such as the number of windows, stairs, a triangular roof versus a flat roof, arches, etc. Children were then taking this interest to the classroom by talking about these things and comparing their own houses and buildings that they lived in to the buildings that they saw on their walks. This interest in buildings was also represented in their daily play in things such as their journals, play dough, magnatiles, Legos, their block play, and even pretend play when they were pretending to be construction workers and “building a building from scratch” using large hollow blocks.

After discussing this with my teaching team and exploring the possibilities for math learning in this project, we decided to plan a building project using open-ended materials and breaking it down into ten sequential steps where each step was needed in order for the next step to happen. This project would also start with activities that were simple and straight forward and become a little more complex with each step. We knew that it would be a lot of work, but we were excited and committed to work together to make it happen!

The first step in our project was to go on a neighborhood walk with clipboards, card-stock and pencils. Children were invited to sketch a building of their choice and concentrate on a specific detail such as number of windows, stairs, roof, etc.

They had the opportunity to review their sketch with me and talk about the specific details in their sketch. This was a great opportunity me to work one on one with the child and model and encourage math language in their description of their building. We also discussed other possible concepts in their sketch such as quantity (number of windows and stairs), size (height and width), spatial awareness (positional words indicating location, direction and distance). The idea was not to have a perfect drawing, but for the child to be able to describe what they saw and what they drew.

In the next few blogs, I will talk about the rest of the steps of our building project and how the children were able to incorporate math at a basic level and reach a more complex level within their exploration of buildings.