Shelters and Houses

This was such a fun block. I love it when I hit it out of the park! I can take a great deal of credit for this block too, since I put it together almost completely from scratch.

The goal of this lesson block was to learn about how different peoples of the world have sheltered themselves based on the climate they live in and the natural materials available to them. I chose six different types of houses in six different geographic regions/biomes. I wrote mostly original stories about six imaginary children living in these regions. I included information about what their lifestyles were like, what foods they ate, what chores they did, what they liked to do in their free time, what their parents did for a living, what kind of climate they lived in, and of course, what their houses were like. The best was when I had told Sariah that I was going to read her a story that I wrote, then I read it to her. She said, "OK, that was good. Now read me the story you wrote." I said, "That was the story I wrote." Her reply: "You wrote that? That was actually really good!"

Stilt House--hot, wet climates (Thailand)

Log cabin--temperate/cold, wet climates (United States)

Ger--cold, dry climates (Mongolia)

Adobe house--hot, dry climates (Mali)

Igloo--Arctic climates (Canada)

Stone house--cold, damp, treeless climates (coast of Ireland)

We did a lot of hands-on stuff this month:

Using playdough to demonstrate how a log house is put together.

Below: the culminating project of the block. I let her choose one of the shelters we learned about and construct a model of it. She chose a log cabin, just as Dallin did when we did this project with him. I was trying to steer her toward an igloo or adobe house, but a log cabin it was. Luckily, our wooded yard provided pretty much all the materials. I remember back in Utah, having to prune my trees just to have "logs" for Dallin's cabin and then having to buy moss at the craft store. This was so much better.

Sariah has had houses on the brain. When her dad brought a big piece of thick white art board home from work, she immediately used it to make a house, complete with a window box and flowers.

Our language arts focus this month (aside from reading, which we are hitting heavily) was grammar, specifically nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs... though we didn't use the technical terms. We simply talked about naming words, doing words, and describing words. We used the Adam and Eve story and built on it for activities to highlight each type of word. It was great fun.

We also used Adam and Even as a jumping off point to learn about the need for shelter and then the discovery of pottery making. We made some dishes with air-drying clay using the pinch pot method and the coil pot method.