Build It!

Science Words:
Structure: Objects made of parts
Layers, folds, weight, heavy, light, strong, weak

How high can you go…
Grab a pile of boxes, blocks or even paper cups. How tall can you make a structure? What did you learn from the first attempt? Try again and see if you can make a taller tower.

House of Cards
Make a house of cards together using standard playing cards. If you put them edge to edge your house your house won’t be stable. If you build your house with each card edge touching the middle of another card, it will stay up longer. So each junction of cards would look like a T. Try it out!

Graham Cracker Houses
Make a graham cracker house using peanut butter as the glue between crackers. What sorts of structures work best? How tall can you build? If you hurry, you can still find after Christmas gingerbread house kits. This would be a fun way to play with structures you can eat!

Favorite Books:
Building a House by Byron Barton
Two Bad Ants by Carl Van Allsburg
Bridges by Carol Johnmann – for the advanced preschooler or a family with older kids – build and test different bridge structures.


Resources on the Web:
→Check out the toothpick city and the windmill pattern you can make at home: www.toothpickcity.com/kids/
→You can’t forget LEGO when talking about building – they have some fun games for preschoolers: http://play.lego.com/en-US/Games/default.aspx?cat=Preschool
→Peep and the Big Wide World has some geometry games for preschoolers:
http://www.peepandthebigwideworld.com/