Back To School Ideas: H Is For Home

1-2-3 Come Make A Shape House With Me!

Since the last "my home" craftivity was so popular, I decided to whip together another social studies lesson you can use when you're studying family and neighborhoods. It's also a fun way to get to know your new students.

Completed projects make an adorable back-to-school bulletin board, and are a nice "icebreaker" for the first week of school, when students are getting to know about their new classmates.

So that math is also covered, I've included all of the 2D standard shapes that children can use to decorate and "build" their home with. Common Core State Standards: K.G.1, K.G.2, K.G.3, 1.G.1, 1.G.2, 1.G.3 can all be covered.

Remind students that 2D shapes are flat shapes. (Lying on a plane.) You can make templates of the shapes using an old file folder.

Have a room helper trace once and then cut out 5-6 at a time, or you can print off the masters, rough cut, and have students trim up their own pieces.

Provide lots of colors, so you can review those as well. You'll also have a nice variety of different looking houses.

I've designed the square windows in such a way, that you can review small, medium and large, as well as fractions: a whole is "cut" in 1/2 and then into 1/4ths to make the windowpanes.

To cover this standard, encourage students to draw windowpane lines on the shapes that they are using for windows.

Be sure to make a sample for yourself to help explain what you want students to do. Have children share their homes, pointing out which shapes they used.

To reinforce more of the shape standard, encourage them to use spatial direction words as well. i.e. "My rectangle door is beside the window. The square window is under the triangle roof." etc.

If you are working on CCSS fractions, students should also use the vocabulary whole, half and fourth when explaining their window shapes. If "Knows their address." is a standard in your school, you can have students write theirs in the middle of the H.

Cutting their school photo into an oval and having them "peek" out a window, adds pizzazz. Click on the link to view/download H Is For House shape craftivity.