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Brick Playbook: Parent Edition

The Building Bricks of Life

Develop models of living things using bricks.

Objective:
Child will be able to develop models of living things and their needs to live using SOHO Bricks as a modeling aid.

Essential Question(s):
What do living things need to survive?
Where do they live and why?
How do they use natural resources?

Special Materials:
Pen/pencil and paper, markers or colored pencils; cards with living things’ names

Bricks Required:
All

Project Structure

Engage:

  1. Provide child with a piece of paper, markers and a pencil for drawing.
  2. Provide child with a card (at random) with a living thing’s name.
    1. Ask child to draw a picture of the living thing and its home (natural environment), including things they would need to live.
    2. Provide child with facilitating questions to support their art:
      1. What does your living thing need to eat to live?
      2. Does the living thing have a special home?
      3. What do you imagine would be in the living thing’s home?

Explore/Explain:

  1. Provide SOHO Bricks to build their living thing and its home.
  2. Provide child the opportunity to write about their living thing:
    1. What is it?
    2. What does it need to live?
    3. What does its home look like and why?
  3. It is okay at this time if child is not sure what living things are or what they need to live, or to know much about their natural environment.

Explain/Elaborate

  1. Provide child with a piece of paper, markers and a pencil for drawing.
  2. Provide child a new living thing card at random.
  3. Have child draw the living thing and its home.
  4. Child can then use SOHO Bricks to build the living thing and its home.
  5. Ask child to write a few sentences about their living thing and its home.
    1. Identify the living thing.
    2. Where does it live and why does it live there?
    3. Child explains their model.
  6. If desired, go a step further and have child identify living things that work together or support one another in an ecosystem.
    1. Have child connect living things that have similar needs or that support one another (i.e food chains/webs).
    2. Child can construct ecosystems and explore living and nonliving things’ relations within their natural habitat.
      1. i.e. plants need sun, water, air to live—bees need the air from plants, warmth from the sun, water and flower nectar and pollen from plants to live.

Projects