What makes a home? Who builds houses and how? What tools do they use? How and what can young children build? What are the one million uses for the broken jewelry or odd shaped bits of plastic and metal from our Hector the Collector collection? How can we build a better world at school? With these pragmatic and heady questions in mind, we started our building study. As always, we started in our own backyard. "We're going on a walk, on a trail, to see a sleeping lion, a dog and a snail!" All children had a chance to walk around our neighborhood looking for homes. We all searched and were delighted to see the snail sculpture, a humble creature who carries its home on its back. We took note of architectural features like domes, columns, arches, and windows in all shapes and sizes. Our youngest children practiced walking together holding hands companionably in a mobile group. They took note of numbers on the houses and the letters on the street signs. We noticed the colors of the doors and we searched for birds nests and ant hills as we tromped along. The older children, ye of greater stamina and less wandering, went farther afield on their walk and even got to meet a construction crew and check out some of their tools and materials. Older groups also did field work at the Building Museum and dug deeper into work on patterns and architecture.
Woodworking is deeply satisfying to children. Some children will spend thirty minutes hammering a nail into a stump, pulling it out and then hammering it back in again. Working with wood, children develop their fine motor and eye hand coordination. They also learn patience and persistence as they hit and miss, hit and miss. Working with wood gives children a taste of what life was (and what it will be again after the zombie apocalypse) where you need skill and competency using your hands, simple tools and natural materials. 
Teachers engaged children in many different building projects using the Hector materials. After sorting materials by color, children made a rainbow and several other gorgeous constructions which we used in other projects and for a must have ALG quilt (auction item!). The book The Apple Pip Princess anchored much of our beginning work with Hector and after making the rainbow, an important part of the story, children sorted Hector items by material and then built towers out of metal and wood like the dastardly princess sisters who make towers to reach the sky. Children used their capacities to reimagine and repurpose items as they combed through the collection to find items corresponding to the magical objects in the story. Children practiced recognizing and writing their numbers as we labeled each object one through seven as the book shows.Children made the characters of the story using Hector materials and demonstrated their tremendous cognitive flexibility as bracelets became mouths and corks became legs.
Then children used their growing literacy skills and understanding of sound/letter relationships to write the names of the characters first with pen and then with magnet letters. 
And because we felt compelled to have real apple pips, children did a baking project where we got to cut lots and lots of apples and to finally find the tiny brown pips, the seeds, inside and add those to our collection. 
We culminated our work with this story with a group retelling of the tale in a book illustrated with our Hector work. Fully immersed now in the Hector-ness of it all, we continued to extend this cognitive and imagination leap across several other amazing projects as well. Children have been studying the works of artist Elizabeth Catlett throughout the year (see her prints around our classroom) and there is one work in particular we have studied through a range of lenses. Children got to see the print in person on a field trip to Discovery Theater and then arranged themselves in a tableaux of the print. 
Later children recreated the print again, this time using Hector materials--all the while gaining understanding and appreciation for the skills and materials used in creating and recreating art. Working on a collaborative art project requires much communication, patience and teamwork - ideas that we sang about daily in our song, "Building a better world," and began to visit and revisit more deeply as we went on in the study.
We also made an awesome marble run from Hector Items and solved some serious engineering problems along the way. How many marbles do you think went to the floor before we came up with the idea of guardrails?
There was much engineering do be done and problems to be solved as we explored ways to make bridges. Using paper in different iterations (folded, crinkled, flat, etc.,) and also using materials such as fabric and wood, children hypothesized and then tested their predictions as they constructed a range of bridges. The plastic elephant was a good sport as he sometimes made it across and sometimes didn't. Children grappled with concepts such as weight, load bearing, structural support, balance and more as they built these bridges; all the while learning how to communicate these complicated ideas to each other and to listen to one another. 
The oldest children also did an intensive study of stained glass. All children were invited to walk outside and upstairs and explore some of the stained glass in our own school building and then represent that experience using contact and tissue paper. The oldest children engaged in a more intensive study. 
We took repeated trips to study the stained glass windows and each time represented the experience through a different medium: we built stained glass with unit blocks and pattern blocks, we sketched it with pencil and drew with oil pastel. Finally we took several days to paint a stain glass window.
We took repeated trips to study the stained glass windows and each time represented the experience through a different medium: we built stained glass with unit blocks and pattern blocks, we sketched it with pencil and drew with oil pastel. Finally we took several days to paint a stain glass window.
Other buildings, as you know, are best eaten and when we say children built with a variety of materials that includes graham crackers and fruit! Children learned about balance and pattern as they built houses out of crackers, patterns out of fruit and then again houses out of fruit and toothpicks. Children (and most living creatures) are sensory beings and the more that they can touch, smell and taste as they make their way through a complex world the better their understanding.
As we moved on in our building study, we returned to another tale to anchor our work. What study on building would be complete without a closer look at the Three Little Pigs and their homes of straw, sticks and bricks. After some initial experiments with our own breath, a blow dryer had a stunning turn as the big bad wolf. Children explored with the different building materials using trial and error as well as applying old lessons as they built and rebuilt again and again over several weeks. We made houses for the pigs using the straw and sticks and some Hector Items for bricks. These houses were used by Melissa in a lovely Three Little Pigs puppet show using Hector items for the pig and wolf puppets. The show was interactive and the children solved the problem of the hungry wolf by a child suggesting the wolf just eat "carrion" instead and thus leave the live animals alone. The scenarios are pretend, but whether it's a hungry wolf or an elephant wanting to get to the other side, the problem solving skills children develop are real and the faith that they can tackle and surmount obstacles will serve them in and out of school, with and without blow dryers and carrion. 
To really bring to life the idea of Building a Better World with friends, we gave the children many and repeated opportunities where they needed to work together as a team. From putting a tire in the sideyard that is too large for one child to lift alone, to team building projects, teamwork opportunities, both carefully rigged and spontaneously occurring, abounded daily. 
A project that threaded throughout this study were our very own Roxaboxen boxes. If you don't know this book you should buy it because I feel it really captures the essence of old school childhood and distills our school play philosophy in picture book form. Each group worked together as a team to paint their box their group color. Deborah took the lead on this project and from rolling up the carpet, to laying the tarp and mixing the paint, each step was undertaken as a collaborative group. Some children required a little more herding than others (not yours, don't worry!) but ultimately everyone persisted until their box was done. After the painting, each box went through two more transformations. First, children painted other cardboard shapes, tubes, woven cardboard, big circles, etc. Later, children affixed the additional cardboard and then decorated the box with Hector materials. After weeks of preparation, finally the boxes were ready for play and play we did. Tons. 
Natasha 
took the lead in reading the book to children and then having them create their own pretend city using the boxes, fabric, hollow blocks and Hector materials. Children played happily in these boxes, creating their own world. Younger children drifted in and out, enjoying the thrill of hiding and being found and the cozy feeling that can only come from being in a snug little nook. Older children stayed for as long as possible, draping themselves in fabric, bringing literacy to life as they elaborated intense roles and complex narratives. They developed their language and social skills as they navigated relationships and solved problems as they arose. 
We took the play outside too and with fabric and cardboard and imagination, children played in the sun and the wind and created whole towns for themselves. While the original boxes may eventually rip and find their way to a recycle bin, the play will certainly live on..
One of our final projects was the amazing newspaper geodome. Children spent weeks carefully rolling up newspaper of different lengths. Then the rolls were compared and sorted by size. Finally, they were assembled into the dome (it was no small help to have an engineer co-op that day).
As we began to transition from Buildings to Animals and Growing in the Spring, the dome was transformed into a cozy Bear Cave for stories and play about hibernation and awakening.
Our last few days of this study, children have been looking at pictures of themselves engaged in all the good work of the past few months and have been given chances to reflect and comment on their work. They have disassembled the geodome and most of the cardboard boxes as they help bring the study to a close. A good time was truly had by all, and we all did our best to build a better world, one person at a time.
