Drawing Faces, Building Houses and Minecraft

This week was another busy one  in kindergarten enrichment.  K students stop me in the halls to ask who will be presenting next!  This week one student shared that she loved to draw faces.  We decided to get outlines of faces in a variety of skin tones and then to add hair, clothes, etc.  Students enjoyed this center....and because it was matched with a great library book about children around the world, we got to think about how different people look and where they come from.  

In another class a student  wanted to build houses. We read a Gail Gibbons book about how a stick frame house is built.  Next we looked at a video and a book that showed houses around the world.  There were so many different houses!  Students used this knowledge and the pictures to create their own houses out of cardboard and classroom materials.  

The final K center this week used the iPad application Minecraft.  Minecraft allows students to build and create.  The kindergartner had used this program and wanted to teach others.  What was great was that he also wanted to make a physical connection to the online building. He did this by asking students to first make a Lego house, and then to replicate the Lego house in Minecraft.  Students learned a new online tool, but they also got a chance to think visually and spatially about both creations!