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Monday, February 13, 2017

Winter Shape Architecture (2016)

Focusing on shapes while teaching architecture to K&1 seem to be a perfect fit. Around Christmas and during winter adds a whole other creative layer for students!
I Can identify the shapes in my artwork.
I Can tell you what an architect does.

Day 1: Intro to Architecture and Building
If you want a great story for introducing architecture read Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beaty it is easy to understand and just the right amount of silly.
I started our lesson with that story and then had them watch this StoryBots video to reinforce.
We talked about all the different kinds of buildings they saw in the book and video and afterwards I had them think-pair-share about what they were going to build using shapes. We did this before they saw my example and my demo video so they wouldn't be set on building a house like mine. 
Because identifying and not creating the shapes was the goal of the lesson I provided cardboard tracers of the basic shapes in all different sizes. If they wanted to draw shapes other than those basic ones they were encouraged to do so. They used glue sponges to assemble their buildings.
Day 2: Shape Graphing and Details.
To put the focus back on the shapes, we started this second day with the book Shape Shift by Joyce Hesselberth.
Then using my artwork as an example, together we graphed out on a basic bar graph, the shapes I used to build with.
They were then asked to do the same with their artwork. We did this before adding details with construction paper crayons to avoid the confusion of graphing any shapes they might draw. They could have included those shapes when graphing, but I wanted to keep it consistent and make sure I knew what they were looking at when I graded.
After they finished graphing we met back on the carpet and they watched my demo of adding details with construction paper crayons and brainstormed all the different details they could add. It was close to Christmas when we worked on these so there was a lot of Christmas related ideas. Pokemon is the big thing right now so that inspired a lot of kiddos too. Some decided on a combo of both!
Day 3: Snow and Architecture Centers.
To wrap up this lesson and unit we started with the book Snow by Uri Shulevitz. It has great pictures of a city (architecture!) during a snowfall which was perfect segway into the snow part of the project.
They watched my demo video of adding snow with a small paintbrush and Q-tips and were sent to explore the different architecture centers I had set up for them. Many were building toys like blocks, legos, straws and connectors, and also coloring sheets of different types of buildings. While they were exploring the centers I called them back in small groups to add snow if they wanted to add it. They did not have to.

Just LOVE this lesson and how they put all their awesome individual ideas into them. They are now on display at our district office because I loved them so much :)
                        

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