Houses and Homes

During our first week of school we took the time to get to know our new friends and feel comfortable in the classroom. Our first IPC unit was houses and homes, we started this unit with our entry point, which was a walk around the neighborhood. During our walk we saw different kinds of houses, house numbers and building materials. After this we built houses in many different ways, we built with Lego, blocks, cylinder rolls, rings, milk cartons… We also crafted our own house and put our family pictures inside.

The second week we built walls for the classroom and discovered that if you use the zigzag brick pattern, your walls are way stronger. We also learned about different rooms in the house and the furniture inside. We crafted our own house together with different rooms.

The third week we read a story about an architect and we designed our dreamhouse and tried to build it. This week, we focused on the houses in our home countries. We looked at the pictures and discussed the similarities and differences. This was very interesting, later we made the pictures into a bingo game to play.

The fourth and fifth week was all about the 3 little pigs. We read the story in different ways, acting it out with masks the children made. The students enjoyed telling the story to the teachers. During these weeks we experimented and built houses with straw, bricks and sticks. We practiced huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf in arts and crafts but also in a numeracy game where we wrote those results down.
We went on two house visits and explored all the different rooms.

During the sixth week we helped animals find their home with a problem solving game and searched outside for more animal homes. We also focused on castles and even made our own castle out of 2D shapes. This prepared us for the exit point, the visit to ‘The castle of the counts’ where we toured the inside and outside of the castle. It was a wonderful experience for the children.

The seventh and last week of the unit we followed Hansel and Gretel on their adventure in the woods. We listened to the story and even made our own gingerbread house. We did this by following a step-by-step recipe that we read together. Later on we even decorated it with real candy. We also learned a very spooky song about ghosts and we practiced all the sounds we learned during the unit. Everyone remembered the movements and songs. On Friday we ate our house during our Halloween party, along with other homemade healthy snacks and it was delicious!