One of the IB units we have developed centers around Who We Are and that includes homes and communities.  Even though we did not officially teach that unit this year (we will next year), we all wanted to try and teach parts of it so that we could get a feel for it and add some ideas to it. We spent two weeks on the homes and communities portion (also included in this 6 week theme is/are: all about me, pets, my family).  Here are some pictures from our study of homes and communities:

This was the big book we read during the communities portion of the unit.  This book came with our Scott Foresman adoption a few years ago.  We used another book titled “Homes Around the World” for our homes study.  I recorded both of these books on my computer for the children to listen to at Listening Work Station.  I use Garage Band and drop in a quiet music track and some sound effects after reading the book into my computer.  It’s really easy–although it still sounds like I am reading in a can…still working on that!!

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We used Legos and the maps that came with our Social Studies kits to make communities. I scooped out a big cupful of Legos on to each table and the children created buildings, cars, etc. to create a community.  We used the reverse side of the maps during our homes study.  I showed the children how to make homes to scale (for our map) and how to add a tab to the bottom for taping it to the map.  The children made a variety of homes and we taped them on.  They also created some trees after noticing that they were missing from the map.