Building Igloos

Well the month of January is officially over and what a busy month we had in Room 8.  In honor of the season winter, we spent the entire month learning about the arctic.  Sharing, exploring, and discovering together made our classroom a wonderful place to visit each day.  Today we predicted which type of igloo would be the strongest.  My kiddos had three choices to choose from.

Marshmallows with toothpicks

Sugar cubes with magic glue(shaving cream and white glue mixed together)

or

Cotton balls with a Styrofoam cup

What would you choose?  It was pretty much even in our class with one little one deciding on her own to use the cotton balls.  Now lets take a look at what happen...

What is a blueprint?

My kiddos were excited to be little engineers and plan out what their igloo was going to look like.  They sat there for a whole 25 minutes drawing their blueprints.  I gave them special black colored pencils to make it official! When it came time to start building the igloos, my kiddos put their blueprint right in front of them as they built their igloo.

We did have some tears through the process.  Some of my kiddos were frustrated when their igloo was not as strong as they thought it would be.  Some were  angry that it was difficult to make the roof for the igloo.  So this was a perfect opportunity to teach life skills such as patience and perseverance.  A great activity and I will definitely do it again!