Build a Bug City Stem Insect Project
During our thematic study of insects, I challenged students to build a bug city at the Construction Center. It's amazing to me to watch what the students come up with when given a task! As I watch students work with the blocks and other materials I have provided, their work is a clear demonstration of their level of critical thinking. For example, these pictures show what two of the groups were able to construct.
Notice how they have built up from the table, how they have made nooks for individual bugs, even how they have sorted the bugs by type to let bugs of the same family "live" together.
It is of great importance to have activities such as this available in the classroom or home school settings, because hands are so important to our brains! By using hands to build, to touch, to explore, we form connections that help us not only to understand the world around us, but to think about the world around us.
Here are some other skills the children are developing by working at the Construction Center:
--Respecting the work of others
--Making choices and decisions
--Negotiating ideas
--Using creative, divergent thinking
--Dialoguing and problem solving
--Determining how real objects fit together
--Experimenting with the properties of physical objects, such as gravity, weight, stability, and balance
