Objectives

• Students will become familiar with the important buildings and services in their community

 Rationale

Students need to be familiar with the important aspects of their community. This will be essential information in cases of emergency (hospital) danger (police) fire (fire station) and other civic situations (library, City Hall).
 Materials

• shoe boxes
• crayons or markers
• scissors
• map
• construction paper
• glue
• community cards
• a bag

 Procedure

1. Brainstorm with students on "community".
2. Determine with students which institutions are essential to a community.
3. Have students draw community cards from a bag.
4. Hand out materials to each group.
5. Have them construct the building that they have on their card. Try to encourage creativity and competition among groups.
6. Once the building is constructed, have students invent clues about their building to see if the class can guess what building they constructed.
7. Once the class guesses the building, have each group place its building on the already constructed class map.

 Evaluation

Students write in their journals explaining why they think it is important to be able to work together in a community.
 Suggested Reading

Dan, Dan the Flying Man by Gardiner and Elizabeth Fuller

Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton

 Resources

Karwowski, Cindy, et al., eds. The Alphabet.

Radtke, Becky. "Fun"Tastic Bulletin Boards For Basic Classroom Curriculum.

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