Talk Together: Building High

  • children’s drawings from Discovery Time activity on Day 1
  • pictures of tall buildings (towers)
  • build
  • higher
  • tower

MA Standards:

English Language Arts/Speaking and Listening/SL.PK.MA.1 Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners during daily routines and play.

MA Draft Standards:

Physical Sciences/Matter and Its Interactions: Structure and Properties of Matter/PS1.A Describe, compare, sort and classify objects based on observable physical characteristics, uses, and whether it is manufactured as part of their classroom play and investigations of the natural and human-made world.

Head Start Outcomes:

Logic and Reasoning/Reasoning and Problem Solving Classifies, compares, and contrasts objects, events, and experiences.
Science Knowledge/Scientific Skills and Method Observes and discusses common properties, differences, and comparisons among objects.

PreK Learning Guidelines:

English Language Arts/Language 2 Participate actively in discussions, listen to the ideas of others, and ask and answer relevant questions.

Talk Together: Building High

© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.

STEM Key Concepts: Different materials are useful for making different structures and different parts of structures

ELA Focus Skills: Listening and Speaking, Vocabulary

Introduce to children the idea of building higher. Show the pictures of the tall buildings and ask, What do you notice about these structures? Ask, Why might we call these buildings towers and not houses? What does towers mean? Go over the features of the building with children. Have children point to and name the features. (floors, walls, etc.)

Ask children, Have you ever wondered how builders make buildings so tall? Ask, Have you ever been to a construction site, or seen a building as it was being made? What did you notice? Talk with children about how buildings are made. Encourage children to talk about what they’ve observed about construction, and how buildings are made (made level by level).

Then have children look at their drawings from yesterday’s Discovery Time. Have children use their drawings to make connections between the characteristics of the materials they used and what the materials were best used for. Then pose a question to children: How could they make their structures higher? Have children plan and sketch on their drawings how they might make their structure higher, drawing the materials they would use.

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