Unsung Community Heroes : Roads and Bridges and Playgrounds oh my! – Come meet some of the people who design and build our buildings, bridges and roads, parks and playgrounds then help us build structures, create a Lego town, experiment with bridge construction, and draw a mural of what kids would put in a park if they had the chance!
Music playing
People in our Neighborhood 730 RONNO
(as kids arrive and during activities later) 
As kids arrive, they browsed fiction and non-fiction books about roads and bridges and cities and such (list below*).
Read:
Roadwork by Sally Sutton (optional – sing to
“Row Row Row Your Boat”) followed by
Tip, Tip, Dig, Dig by Emma Garcia
(Younger group)Read:
Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beaty followed by
Superhero by Marc Tauss
(Older group) Movement Activity:
People in our Neighborhood 730 RONNO (HIL) #5 “Community Helper Hop” for younger group only.
Introduced Carl Andreassen and Kelly Major from the Somerset County Engineering Dept. who talked about bridges and materials, showing pictures and models of different types (including one that had broken when an overloaded truck attempted to drive across.)
Engineer Carl explaining strength of materials “Who can break the wood stick?”
Using rope and kids to demonstrate a suspension bridge:
Stations: Up close to bridges – experimenting with arch bridge models(owned by Somerset County)
Paper bridge challenge (8.5x11 paper, paper clips, ruler, masking tape (to mark 7” wide space), books to use as end towers, lots of pennies)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/educator/act_paper_ho.html
Lego town (Tan mural paper with roads laid out, boxes of Legos) – kids designed structures: homes, stores, schools, hospital, etc.)
Park/Playground mural: (Green mural paper, scrap paper, markers, scissors, glue) – Kids created what they’d like to have in a park.
Free form building using
Straws and Connectors sets.
Tower Challenge (straws, paper clips, pipe cleaners, golf balls) - See how tall you can build your structure using straws, paper clips, and pipe cleaners and still be able to balance a golf ball on top.
http://tryengineering.org/lessons/tower.pdf (only offered to the older session)
*Other books to display/booktalk (thanks to PUBYAC librarians for some of these suggestions!):
Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building by Deborah Hopkinson
Big Red Bus by Judy Hindley
(a bus that gets stuck in a pot hole blocking traffic and then the road guys show up to make the repairs so traffic can move again), Dreaming Up: a Celebration of Building by Christy Hale (
I used it here: http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2013/12/whats-knext.html),
Lucky Ducklings by Eva Moore
(ducklings in a storm drain are rescued by community helpers), Beneath the bridge by Hazel Hutchins
(shows the travels of a paper boat through all sorts of landscapes--rural to urban), Curious George & the Dump Truck (dump truck is being used to byworkers to make the park better for people, but Curious George "made
the park better for ducks too."),
Mirror by Jeanne Baker
(parallel wordless texts show two boys and their families In Sydney, Australia, and in Morocco have a day of shopping in two wordless stories that are intended to be read one from left to right and the other from right to left -- adds a multi-cultural element),
A Street in Time by Anne Millard and
A City in Time by Phillip Steele,
If You Lived Here by Giles Laroche
(collage spreads of dwellings in other world regions and historical times to explain how different people live and have lived, from a village house in South Africa to a floating green house in the Netherlands.) Billions of Bricks by Kurt Cyrus (Winners 2017)
See also:
http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Bridge-Building8/4/2015
