Math Centers- Construction

Construction- Building with different kinds of materials is important for kids.  They use critical and creative thinking skills as well as trial and error.  It is the one center I have seen very little of in kindergarten. 

I always include cars and people to go with which ever type of building material I choose.  Examples might be legos, waffle blocks, brick blocks...  You can put blue prints (make them yourself or child made by crayon resist drawings of buildings and blue watercolor paint)  or copy me papers (include a pattern or 3D structure for children to copy) in the center to challenge the kids.  Include paper, pencils, and a clipboard to encourage writing.

Or check out some of these creative construction ideas


What about these for building quietly?  Colorful and creative


amazing road kids can put together like a puzzle

another neat road

another road that cars travel down stairs


aren't these building materials unique and fun?



Time For Play has cheap creative construction materials


Chasing Cheerios has this wonderful colorful block fun.

So what are some of your ideas?  Do you include construction in your centers?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Math Centers- Number work

Image
Children get to explore numbers in a variety of forms.  Numeral to set These types of games are very simple to make.  Pick any theme.  Cut shapes or buy them already cut out.  Then find something that goes with the shape to use as counters.  I like using those shaped erasers you can buy at the dollar store. Here are butterflies cut from the ellison machine. I put numbers 1-10 on the front and 11-20 on the back just so higher level thinkers can have a challenge.  I have snowmen, cars, Christmas trees, hearts, and flowers.  Any little manipulative piece can be paired with a shape to make a thematic game. You can also buy store bought games and adapt them to your needs.  This game is cute but is too easy.  It is set up more like flash cards so that kids can count the number of M&M's on each card.  I use bowls or thought about making candy jars with the little M&M pieces. great number work This site has the cutest printab...
Read more

Changes, Changes- A book of building and a craft too

Image
Changes, Changes is a book by Pat Hutchins This book has no words and I was amazed at how it kept all the children's interest.  We predicted what the people would build next.  At the end of the story we recalled all the different things that were built.  They did great with it.  Some even asked to read it again.  Since we share all our books from Creative Curriculum with another class, we had to give the book up for the day. I decided to let the children make their own structures like in the book. Like the book states, plans change. My lesson plan shows the intent of the activity below. First, we worked together to watercolor paint a large piece of paper.  I then cut out shapes from the paper, and I added some other paper scraps from other cutting projects.  Next the kids were asked to glue some shapes down to make something.  I recorded what they made on each page along with their name. We turned it into a book we will keep in our library....
Read more

Little Blue and Little Yellow

Image
     We read this book by Leo Lionni about 2 friends, little blobs of color, who are different yet are the best of friends.  They show all the events of their day together after accidentally squishing together becoming green during a hug. While teaching, I would have the kids find a friend to do this art activity.  I would paint one child's hand blue and one child's hand yellow.  Then they squished their hands together representing the hug in the book. Since I only have one child, we adapted it this way to make a book. One hand was painted one color the other hand painted a different color, then rug together. We made hand prints on paper I had printed simple words to recreate the story. "This is Little Red. This is Little Blue.  They are friends.  They hugged, and hugged, and hugged.  They turned Purple. We did all the primary colors and added white to red and black. My daughter loves singing the mixing colors song on Little...
Read more