Construction Unit - Blueprints and Designs

Here's a great follow-up to yesterday's writing exercise! Now that your students have discussed the process for building a house/building, have them participate in it, creating blueprints and a design gallery for a new building - perhaps a new house or school! Before beginning the project, expound on your discussion from the previous day, describing what an architect does, the things they have to keep in mind when designing a building {safety, how it's going to be used, etc.}, and what their process might look like {in very abbreviated terms, of course!}. To bring the lesson to life, you might even consider inviting the architect who designed your school building to come in and talk with your kiddos!

Construct an official project folder {like the one shown above} for each student. Include a sheet of paper with grid lines, for students to use when drawing the plan for their building, as well as an area that can be used as a 'design gallery'.

Project Completion

Since we used this lesson at church, our example blueprint paper and project folder is sure to be a bit different. We incorporated our focus Bible verse at the bottom of the drawing paper and, instead of a house, had our kiddos design a church building. Also, the design gallery took on a different look. To mimic the gold/jeweled walls of the temple in our story, we had our students form shapes and designs from chenille stems, press them flat onto the folder, glue them down, and cover them with gold candy wrappers. The foil molded nicely to the shapes and created the look of stamped gold. We also had the kiddos select three colored gems to glue to the folder indicating the color, shape, and style of jewels they would have had inlaid in the gold walls.

For your project folders, trade out the Bible verse for a signature line {having your students 'approve' their blueprint as 'Senior Architect' of the project} and consider having various recycled materials - cardboard tubes, soup cans, plastic tubs, cereal/cracker boxes, bottle caps, art tissue paper, craft paint etc. - available as inspiration for your students' design galleries.

We think this fits perfectly with a construction unit - promoting creativity and an awareness of how buildings are designed - and we know your students will have a blast drawing and designing a new building!