Community Building 

As a hands-on lesson within our Map Skills unit, the children had the task of cooperatively creating a community of their choice comprised of four to five buildings using Legos, wooden, plastic, and Unifix  cubes (which was assigned by the teacher) as well as creating a map and map key that matched.  They had the option of building a small city community, a farm community, a neighborhood community, etc.  Most of the groups chose a city community most likely because of the anticipated excitement of building a skyscraper.

Each group had to decide on the type of community and then disperse the duties of the actual building among themselves. The Legos and Unifix cubes were in abundance although the number of cubes that the children were permitted to use were limited somewhat.  There were only 100 of the wooden and plastic cubes available each, in order to construct four to five buildings.  Therefore, the groups that were assigned the wooden and plastic cubes were faced not only with devising plans to build their communities, but to complete the task cooperatively.

The final results were very good showing ingenuity and creativity despite the type, number of blocks or cubes available.  The communities had structures such as hospitals, museums, apartment buildings, etc. A couple of the groups even had the time to create roadways and people to accompany their community.

This was a quick yet fun lesson for the children to utilize the map skills previously learned as well as a chance to show the benefits of group cooperation.  Take a look at the pictures to see the interesting communities that were erected.