Then and Now #2: Housing Evolution

Making the cave

Since the children were intrigued with the houses from the past, I decided to explore more into the evolution of houses from the past to present. The children understand that early people used caves as shelter and as time passed, humans learned to build their own instead of searching for caves. However the time concept is still hard for the children to grasp so I showed pictures of early man's life (especially how they looked). Immediately they noticed that early people looked very different from people nowadays. Here are some of their comments:

Making a bone house

Molly: They look like gorillas.
Alfie: They're not wearing clothes!
Theo: They hunt.
Allye: The elephants have fur! (And this started a whole other conversation about woolly mammoth!)
Brendan: There are bone houses!
Angela: Bone houses? We don't live in bone houses.

Painting the display

Making the loghouse

Placing the caves

Currently the children are working on a 3D timeline of the housing evolution. The Water group is very eager to display their model so children from other groups can see how houses have changed from the past to present.

Then and Now #1: Start of the New Unit

Drawing something from the past or the present

Last week, I asked the children to share their ideas of what existed a long time ago. As each child shared his/her idea, another would say: "But we have that now too!" They all looked quite confused.
Then we browsed through the book How People Lived by Jim Pipe, to help them compare the past with the present. The book showed how cavemen used to live and how other ancient civilizations were like. The children noticed many things from the past, like how there were no roads, people do laundry in a tub, and there was no bathroom! The children were especially interested in the different houses that people used to live in, starting from the caves for the cavemen to the modern skyscrapers that we have now.

Children's ideas before looking at How People Lived

Children's ideas after looking at the book