In the July 2010 meeting of the our Kindergartener Lego club meeting our goal was to build a tower. We borrowed the idea from the 2nd Grade club. I was thankful that I had a person to help from the Museum, Heidi. Heidi is a lego lover and was a great help.
I started by asking the kids if they had seen construction sites and if they thought that it was just one person or many that work at them. With their answers I explained that it take many different people to build a house or a tower. I explained the roles of an architect, a contractor and sub-contractors.
We had the children start by taking on the role of an architect (we needed to know what type of tower we were going to build). They all had 5-10 minutes to draw a tower and then we went around the room (7 kids attended) looking at each drawing for ideas. After reviewing the drawings, I went to the whiteboard and asked them questions about the size and style of the tower that they wanted as a group. It was decided that we build a tower that was larger at the bottom and got smaller at the top. We found a top tower piece we would use and separated into three groups: bottom level (1), middle level (2), and next to top level (3). Each group got to work. As a leader Heidi and I were the contractors and each group was a subcontractor. As such we had to remind the children to stay on task and remember to build things like walls and such. We had a limited time frame in which to build.
At the end of the session we combined the levels. The children added some extra features they found in their searches like a boat and we compared it to the drawing on the white board. It was similar but the 2nd floor was a little larger than the design specified. I stressed how contractors and subcontractors need to work together and talk to one another to ensure that pieces will fit together.
The kids seemed to really enjoy it.
We ended with cleanup time and a drawing from the parts draft box: each child take 10 lego pieces from the box home to keep.
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