Construction lesson plans

[Brenda S.]

My school district is adding on to our building. It is right outside my window. My students stand at the window and watch all day. I would like to find some ideas for lesson plans about dump trucks, bulldozers, and construction.

I haven't come up with much yet. Any ideas would be wonderful.

Thanks, Brenda

[czacza]

Read the book "Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel" ( I think that's the title!!) It's such a great one!! Find internet pix of construction vehicles- hang at window with names of each type of truck to encourage 'writing' about what they see outside window, tonka trucks in block center....

[CWCA]

You can do measurement activities. Bring in tape measures and have them measure different aspects of the room. You can have them discover perimeter by finding out how far it is to go all the way around your room.

You can build pulleys and ramps and talk about how they help make jobs easier.

The students can draw plans of their own buildings and label them.

You can set up a construction center. The students can use low-temp glue guns to build creations from cardboard tubes, assorted lids, film canisters, or whatever type of objects you can collect. You can have wood scraps the children can saw and nail together. (Appropriate supervision and safety guidelines are needed.)

The students can try building toothpick structures. They can experiment with materials to connect the toothpicks (marshmallows, play-doh). How tall can they build? What different techniques did they discover? What happens if they use straws or popsicle sticks? (I've used graham crackers for building structures, but they take more assistance and patience.)

http://www.contractor.edu/heavyequip...equipment.html had some ideas.

Books:
Curious George and the Dump Truck by H.A. Rey
Diggers by Fiona Watt
Digger (Machines at Work) by Nicola Deschamps
Dazzling Diggers by Tony Mitton
C is for Construction: Big Trucks and Diggers from A to Z by Caterpillar
Construction Trucks by Jennifer Dussling
Building Machines and What They Do by Derek Radford
Construction Zone Board Book by Tana Hoban
Architects Make Zigzags: Looking at Architecture from A to Z by Diane Maddex

[Brenda S.]

Great ideas! Thanks. I really appreciate the book titles.

I was told today that the building needs an emergency exit during construction. They will be taking about 5 feet off the end of my room to build a hallway and exit. They will build the wall over spring break. I smiled the whole time, but inside I was screaming! My room is already too small.

[becky]

Mailbox Magazine has a construction theme for making words, but I forget which issue.

[CWCA]

Mailbox Magazine: It might have been the Feb/March 2002 issue (I just saw it recently). There was also a senses activity (noises at a construction site) in the Aug/Sept 2001 issue. There was a bulletin board idea in the Feb/March 2005; it used a construction motif and said "Students hard at work".

[Preeti]

Hi, I'm a pre k teacher and am new to this website.
For one of my 'construction' class I used thick cardboards, pieces of foam boards, real nails (not too sharp ones) and toy hammers. I asked the students to build houses or whatever they could imagine. They enjoyed knocking down the nails in the boards. It's a little noisy though.