First graders are continuing their study of building and construction fundamentals. Today we looked at how basic shapes can be combined to make more complex objects and creatures. Students were given a background and a sheets of basic shapes that they could color, cut, and combine to build a scene.

This is one of those times I wish I saw my students for more than 40 minutes a week because I would have loved to use these pictures as story starters.

The backgrounds and shape templates are attached below.

First graders took this week to apply all we've learned about how we can attach paper and built some marvelous, magical articulated creatures. Tape, glue sticks, and brass fasteners.

I gave them these templates of simple shapes to encourage them to think about how complex creations can be broken down into their much more simple parts. I printed them on yardstick so that they hold up better.

We've been continuing to expand our materials vocabulary and skills. We explored the benefits/challenges are various glues and other fasteners (string, brass fasteners, staples) that we can use when constructing with paper, cardstock, and cardboard. 

We used the sheet below to guide our explorations. I printed these on cardstock to give them a bit more durability.

To build better builders we need to help them know their materials, what works for what. Tape is an essential tool in our maker space and I like to take one lesson to review types of type and why certain tapes are better for certain jobs.

We do a little lab where we explore the stickiness, strength, and flexibility of tapes and then go over some tape techniques. ​

Finally we had a Monday and I got to see my 1st graders! After some intros we got down to business learning about our first building material, paper. We spent our first class working on some paper craft fundamentals: book folds, fan folds, bending tubes, cones, spirals, fringe and curly fringe. ​

Our second class we took all we practiced and applied to the building of some wonderful 3-D paper creatures. ​