Brick laying, construction sites, and tools—oh my! This week’s unit is all about building up (and even a little breaking down 😉). By the end of the week, you’ll have tackled measuring, engineering, phonics, photography and more! Use our simple printable tracker worksheet to keep a record of those important skills you’re building. 🚧🚧🚧
Note: Occasionally we include project upgrades (for kids ready for more) and modifications (which can be useful for including younger siblings). We’ll mark those with the plus (+) or minus (-) symbols.
What you need:
Books (find at your local library or order below on Amazon)
- Whose Tools? by Toni Buzzeo (for ages 3-4) (or read it here on OpenLibrary) or Busy Builders, Busy Week! by Jean Reidy
- Pop’s Bridge by Eve Bunting (or find it here on OpenLibrary)
- Builders & Breakers by Steve Light (or you can listen our L+L read aloud here!)
- Brick by Brick by Heidi Woodward Sheffield (or you can listen to our read aloud here)
Supplies (use what you have, but here are links to shop if you need anything)
Although you don’t need a tool set for this week, you may want one. Check out this option or this one. You might also want to have some toy construction vehicles. Many of the bloggers in our unit talk about finding them at thrift stores or dollar stores but if that’s not an option for you, you can find them here.
- paper + access to a printer (don’t have one? we like this model)
- something to use as counters (coins, beans, blocks—anything can work!)
- dice (optional for upgrade)
- laminator + laminating sheets (optional, but recommended for repeating lessons)
- construction paper
- black marker
- empty water bottle
- balloon
- straw
- Blu-tac or putty
- tray or baking sheet
- wooden blocks (you’ll use these for two activities)
- cardstock
- small stones (or marbles, coins, or other small toys)
- white glue
- liquid starch (or you can use this liquid activator—this is for the slime recipe)
- gray acrylic paint
- aquarium gravel (or any small rocks and gravel)
- play dough (or you can make your own with this recipe)
- plastic sand shovel or spoon
- glue stick
- mini marshmallows (you can also use small balls of play dough)
- toothpicks
- LEGO, DUPLO, or other interlocking blocks (don’t have any? Here’s a starter set that you can use for multiple activities this week and beyond!)
- rolling pin (or you can use a glass bottle)
- tape
- an empty milk jug or juice carton
- scissors or craft knife
- patterned duct tape (choose a pattern that your child will like!)
- embroidery floss or string
- beads (optional)
- small stick from outside
- rocks (smooth, flat rocks will work best—if you can’t find any outside, you can order these)
- permanent marker
What to do:
We recommend doing the below lessons in this order to build on each skill your child will develop, but don’t feel that you *need* to do them in this order. Do what works for you and your child. If they love an activity, feel free to repeat! Not a winner? Skip and try the next thing. Have fun!
Letter of the Week: T
New to the letter of the week? Start here! Next, print your letter T coloring sheet and Letter Guide. Let your child color the coloring sheet as you work through the next part of the lesson.
The letter T makes one sound: /t/ as in “tools”, as you can see on the first page of the letter guide. Reinforce the sounds with our Letter of the Week Song.
Remember, the guide isn’t a worksheet! The first page is for you, the grown-up. Use it to introduce the letter name, the sounds it makes, and to demonstrate how to draw each letter. Display the Letter Guide in your school area along with the completed coloring sheet to reinforce the lesson throughout the week.
Next, use the second sheet to create a page for your child’s phonics book. Review the book a few times each week until your child has mastered these phonics.
Lesson 1
Introduce our unit this week with some construction books! Read Who’s tools? or Busy Builders, Busy Week! depending on your child’s ability. Pull out any tools you have at home and discuss the tool’s name and purpose, or use this printable to learn the names of common tools.
Activity 1: Math
Fill the dump truck number activity. Print out the truck and the numbers and practice number value with this hands-on activity. If possible, laminate the page and the numbers to make it last longer (and easier to repeat the lesson later on). Use counters or real rocks to fill the truck.
(+) Upgrade this activity by adding dice. Roll a die to practice identifying and matching the number on the die to the printed numbers. To practice sums, roll a dice set and have your child add the numbers. To practice subtraction, roll a dice set and have your child subtract the numbers.
Activity 2: Sorting + shapes
Make a tool puzzle and practice matching with a plastic tool set.
(+) If this seems too simply for your child, instead of preparing this activity in advance, have them trace the tools. It will become a great fine motor activity!
Tip: Does your homeschool have multiple ages? This is a great activity for older children to work with younger ones. Have the older child trace the tool and the younger child match them. Older students can reinforce the tool name knowledge by “teaching” younger students.
Activity 3: STEM
Play with water like a plumber and learn about air pressure with this fun engineering activity.
***We want to see your water fountains! Share them on Instagram with #learnandliveletter and tag us @learnandliveletter!
Lesson 2
Start by reading Pop’s Bridge. This charming book will help your child learn the stories behind those large structures all around us—and realize that they take a lot of people to build!
Activity 1: STEM
Build a bridge activity. Let’s build and test a variety of bridge designs and structure ideas. Using play blocks and cardstock paper, build a bridge and place stones on the paper to test its strength. Change the design to find the strongest structure.
Have your child determine which one is strongest. If your child is younger, you might need to build the bridges and then have them test and compare the different strengths. Older kids will enjoy building different bridges themselves.
(+) Is your child ready to make records of the results? Download our tracking chart here!
Activity 2: Pattern Recognition
Practice patterns with this printable activity. Instead of working with the printout as a whole sheet of paper, cut the page into strips to make this activity easier for your child to master. Be sure to print in color to make the pattern easier to see.
Tip: If your child is having trouble seeing the patterns, try saying them out loud to see if they can figure out what comes next—they may be an auditory learner!
Activity 3: Sensory
Construction slime. If your kid loves slime, try this ooey-gooey activity. That blog post provides inspiration on how to play with the slime, but you can use this slime recipe—just add a few drops of gray acrylic paint on the second step and then mix in aquarium (or outside) gravel at the end for texture if desired.
Lesson 3
Read Brick by Brick. This story will introduce a mason’s profession. Do you have brick structures in your community or on your own home? Be sure to point these out the next time you pass by one.
Activity 1: STEM
Have your child try their own hand at brick laying with this hands-on activity. (Don’t have blocks? You can also use dominos, match boxes, or even make an edible version with crackers and nut butter!)
Activity 2: Math
This shorter and longer measuring math activity provides fine motor skills practice while also building on language skills. Print and follow the directions on the printable. You may want to connect this activity with our story by observing the size of the bricks in our pictures. Do they use the same size all the time? Do they ever cut the bricks to make them smaller?
Activity 3: Geometry
Let’s continue our building activities today by learning the names of geometric shapes. This shape activity will reinforce geometric naming and building with marshmallows and toothpicks. Count the corners and the sides of each shape to reinforce the lesson and work on those counting skills.
(-) Need a modification? Reinforce shape recognition with this build-a-truck activity. Cut out the paper shapes in advance, then let your child build their truck. Glue their favorites to a piece of paper to display.
Lesson 4
Start by reading Builders & Breakers, then talk about what it would be like to visit a construction site. What would you expect to see? What would you hear? Try to engage all of their senses as you read.
Activity 1: Artist Study
Let’s examine a photograph called “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper.” It’s a famous photograph by an unknown person.
Taken Sept. 20, 1932, during the construction of Rockefeller Center, the well-known portrait of 11 immigrant laborers, legs dangling 850 feet above Midtown, ran in the Oct. 2 Sunday supplement of The New York Herald-Tribune, with the caption “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper.” Everybody knows the picture. Nobody knows who took it. And for most of its 80 years no one has known who’s in it.
Discuss the picture with your child. Would they want to eat lunch up in the air like the construction workers in the photo? Do the men look scared? Older children might want to discuss what an immigrant is and how they have played an integral part of infrastructure throughout American History.
Activity 2: Field Trip
Visit a construction site in your area. Observe the workers and the activity. Ask questions like, “Does this remind you of your book? What is the same? What is different from what you expected?”
(+) Have your child take a photograph of something on the site that stands out for them. Edit the photograph to black and white and create your own art piece by having it enlarged, printed and displayed in your school area or home. You might be amazed at what they capture!
Activity 3: Math
Measuring length activity. Let’s measure the length of each family members’ foot. You may want to trace feet on construction paper first to make the process a bit easier. Record your findings on this printable. Use DUPLOs, LEGOs, or a ruler (Need one? Get this printable version here. Click directly on the image to print.) to measure your family’s feet. If your child is really engaged, let them use the blocks or their ruler to measure other items around the home like cups, silverware, books, crayons, etc.
Lesson 5
This week is packed with construction fun, so use today to re-read any books your child loved or catch up on books you may have missed so far.
Activity 1: STEM + Craft
(+) This construction project using paper towel rolls and straws will be a great upgrade for the builder in your house.
Activity 2: Literacy
Rocks and construction literacy play. Invite your child to play with rocks, sticks, pebbles and construction vehicles. (You can also used dried beans or sand for added texture!) If you kept your river rocks from our Rocks Unit, bring those out again. Write a letter on each rock you have. Then, use this sensory play activity to practice letter recognition and letter sounds. Remember to meet your child wherever they are in their phonics journey!
Activity 3: Gross motor
Let’s move a little with the help of these construction vehicles movement cards. 🚚
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