3rd, 4th, 5th Grade Architecture/Writing House Projects

Scale Model House Project

Architecture and Writing Program
Garfield Elementary School

Artist/Instructor: Claire Bain
Assisted by Linda Lam and Leslie Fleming
Sponsored by Leap...Imagination in Learning

Scale model house made by individual student. 1/4 inch = 1 foot

The 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders brainstormed, wrote, and sketched a design for houses that they imagined themselves living in. They drew the floor plan of their houses to 1/4 inch scale (1/4 inch = 1 foot) on 1/4" grid graph paper.

With the knowledge and understanding gained previously by working in groups creating large-scale house models, they were able to design rooms large enough to accommodate furniture and space to move about.

A larger scale (1 inch = 1 foot) house model made by a group of students.

They then built the corresponding walls out of corrugated cardboard, and painted them.

When the models were dry, they drew the doors and windows using colored ink markers. They looked at examples of door and window styles from San Francisco, Burkina Faso (Africa) and India. They also used templates of doors and people as guides for placement and size of doors and windows.

During this project, they also wrote stories and poems about architecture, including mysteries and animal architecture.

Some of the goals accomplished by the project were:
- learning/reinforcing concepts of scale
- learning concepts of imagining a usable, livable home
- learning basic drafting skills
- learning vocabulary words from architecture and geometry
- using imagination in writing to create characters, stories, and spaces
- in writing: identifying tone; analyzing word choice; understanding poetic structure; understanding character, main idea, plot, text structure, and historical context

For more information: CBainArtEd.blogspot.com artistabain@yahoo.com Leap4kids.org