Building Courage... and Houses

I have a confession I've not been able to write here yet. I am one of those moms. The ones who go overboard too often. I blame medical school for this. Med school is somewhat rigorous. When I finished it and started being a stay-at-home mom, I filled the void left by patient care and studying with obsessing over every aspect of parenting. Some of that has subsided with time (and a second child... oh, just LET her climb up the pantry shelves and fall on her head and get it over with). Some has not. One area that hasn't changed is my love of incessant "enrichment-type activities." I blame my degree in education for that one.

And so... you might as well know the truth about me... my son has a weekly "theme." We check out books from the library, do projects, occasionally take field trips and even make snacks all week long around the theme. This week we talked about building houses. We checked out the books:

• Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton This was a wonderful choice for my almost-4-year-old. It's a sweet story, complex enough to hold his attention but moved quickly enough not to lose it.
• The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton This was not strictly about construction, but since we talked mostly about building houses and it featured a house, and since it does deal with urbanization (and thereby indirectly with construction) and mostly because it isa classic and a Caldecott winner, we checked it out. It is a good story, but sad (with a happy ending). Luckily, the sadness was mostly above my son. He likes it because there's a train in it. So there you go.
• Building a House by Byron Barton Lots of bold, simple drawings like all of Barton's books. This book is probably a little simple for my son, however it was still a good description of the steps in the building process.
• Building with Dad by Carol Nevius This was a neat book that opened up instead of to the left. It features a child helping his dad build a new school... his new school. Theillustrations are life-like and drawn from different perspectives than most (from low down looking up, for example).
• Block City by Robert Louis Stevenson This is an illustrated version of Stevenson's poem from "A Child's Garden ofVerses." I loved it because it'sdifferent from most of what we read and again, it's aclassic. Though to be honest, it was my son's least favorite of the five.

Our activities for the week included:

• Making a blueprint. My son had a fantastic time painting the paper blue, but the concept of the floor plan wasprobably a little to complex for him. We followed the directions here: http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2010/05/be-an-architect.html (As an aside, there will be a LOT of this website here because I love, LOVE, LOOOOVE it.)
• Making a house "H" (and "h"). Each week,we talk about a letter. At first we tied it to learning the names of uppercase letters, then lowercase letters, and then the sounds letters make. He knows all of those now, so now we are practicing writing them. The link is here:http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/category/lowercase-h We also did an uppercase H with no chimney, but a roof on top.
• Building a skyscraper. We also work on a number each week. Right now I think learning to write the alphabet is enough for him and numbers have never been as easy for him as letters are. So we still focus on recognizing the numbers (which he does, but only through "10") and counting. We based the skyscraper on this one: http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2009/02/shapes-in-the-city.html, however instead of focusing on window shapes, we talked about "10" and put 10 windows on each side of the building. This was a great project because he's used it lots to play cars and trains with.
• Visiting a construction site. Luckily this was easy since there is a lot of construction in our neighborhood. After making our own blueprint and reading books about the steps in building a home, we talked about different homes in different stages of construction.
• Building houses out of his snacks. I gave him graham crackers and cantaloupe and apples cut in triangles and squares so he could use the crackers as houses, the triangles as roofs and the squares as windows.