Busy Building

There is so much building going on in the preschool!  As part of our exploration of buildings in the city, children have been working hard to build safe, strong and beautiful multi-story buildings like those they might find around Hoboken. The classroom neighborhood is growing!

At the light table, children have constructed many creative and beautiful designs, often collaborating with a friend to make their structure. 

As children learn about symmetry, they have been building amazing designs using the pattern blocks.  They must think carefully and often have to adjust their plan to make sure the design is the same on both sides (or on the top and bottom, or all around).  

Children have also been building as they use cubes to add numbers.  They have been playing a counting game, in which they must roll dice, count and take cubes and continue to add cubes to make a “train”.  As they build the train, they see the number of cubes growing and often stop to count how many they have all together.  As they practice the concept of addition, they are also counting, comparing, and working on recognizing the quantity on the die immediately without counting it (subitizing).  Fingers are also getting a workout to help with fine motor strength–the cubes are hard to put together!

Most of this building work that the children have been doing fosters spatial awareness, as well as creative and mathematical thinking and experience.  However, through it all, they are also building vocabulary, communication skills, knowledge, and relationships with each other!  WE ARE BUILDING!