Infant/Toddler

Building language: As you walk through the neighborhood describe the colors, sizes and shapes of different buildings. These descriptions are very important for language development and will come in handy as your child begins to describe them on his own. At this young age, children rely a lot on their senses to explore the world. Encourage your child to touch the buildings to build the language of texture: smooth, rough, stone, brick, wood, etc., as well as the language of shape.

Preschooler/Kindergartner

Describing stone: As your child looks closely at the different kinds of stone used for buildings, encourage her to look carefully to describe and make comparisons based on color and texture. Ask, “When you look up close, does the stone have just one color, or are there several?” These observations provide some insight into how stone is used both for strength and for design in building, and that not all stone is the same.

Building a structure: After looking at and talking about local structures with your child, find some time and materials to engage him in his own building based on a few of the features you and he observed. It is important that you listen to him describe what he is building. If appropriate, try to tie his structure to what you both saw outdoors.

Big machines: Building large structures requires some amazing machinery. As you pass by construction sites, try to slow down to observe and wonder about the various machines: what they do and how they help the builders. Imagine aloud ”What do you think it would be like if instead of a front-end loader some people dug this big hole with a shovel?”

First Grader/Reader-Writer

What’s that stone? As your child begins to discriminate various materials, try to tie these materials to their origins as best you can. For instance, a variety of stone is used for buildings. Consult a guide to rocks and minerals to try to identify the kinds of stone in the different buildings you and your child encounter. Try to find out where the various stone might come from—a local quarry perhaps? If so, then why not try to visit the quarry to have a glimpse of how stone is turned into a building material?

Sketch that building: Encourage your child to pick out a favorite structure such as a house, office building or bridge. Next ask her to draw what she sees. This kind of drawing is not meant as an art project as much as it is intended to help her look carefully at the structure—its general shape, outline, exterior features such as chimneys, stairs, etc. If the sketching is difficult to do in a sitting, take a photo of the building to bring home.

Roofs: Look at a cluster of buildings and focus on comparing just one part across all the buildings, such as roofs, for example. (It could also be windows, or stairways, etc.) Why are the roofs all so different? What is the advantage of one roof style over another? Wondering aloud can provoke some interesting thinking about the structure-function relationship.