Community Village Class Project

I love have theme days or units at school, and this community village class project is one of my favorites each year!

We begin the unit by reading in our social studies books about communities. We learn about needs and wants, about goods and services and also about all the different things that make up a community.

A week or so before, I send home an assignment for each student to make a community building and bring it in to the class on an appointed day. I do make a list of possible buildings/projects, but I am also a big fan of letting the students pick if they are thinking of something that I didn’t have on my list! I also like to keep the project fairly open-ended so that the kids can be creative. I have students make their buildings out of legos and some kids make giant cardboard creations. I just love to see their creativity and what they come up with!

This year, I had all the students bring their buildings in and we put them on the back table. Later in the day, we talked about voting to elect a mayor. I randomly selected three kids to “run for mayor”. I then did a BLIND vote (no need to create drama!) to vote for mayor and they elected a student mayor. I then instructed this mayor to “hire” road crews to build a road to create our town. It was hysterical because the mayor instructed someone to do something and half the class was unhappy with the decision. Welcome to politics, kids :). Ha.

Once the roads were “built”, I called on individual students to bring their buildings and choose where they wanted it in town. It was SO FUN to watch this process. Some kids chose to put their buildings near their friends buildings. Some choose the end of a road or a corner lot. The campsite was voted to be way out in the boonies.

It’s SO FUN to see the kids thinking through all of these things. Lesson plans come most alive when the kids get to have hands-on experiences!

Here is what my students came up with this year:

Our village with the masking tape roads:

Here are some of the individual buildings:

A police station and a lumber yard:

Chick-fil-a and Target!

A church and a fire station:

A flower shop, coffee shop and a post office:

Kroger, a school, and hospital.

A campsite:

We also had a movie theatre but I completely forgot to take a picture of it!!

After we had set up our village, we ended up reading the Scholastic News called “A Doggy Mayor!” The kids really got a kick out of this as they had just talked about a mayor and voted for one and learned a little bit about what a mayor does.

I love this project. I know that some people on the internet get annoyed if kid work looks like an adult had a hand in it. Personally, I love seeing BOTH. I love seeing the projects that were clearly made by just children. I also love seeing the projects that I know an adult helped with. My husband and my daughter love to work together on these types of school projects, and my husband is very meticulous and likes the project to look perfect. But they hang out together the entire time and it’s a special bonding time for them. So I completely understand both sides. And I accept both. As long as the parent didn’t do it 100% by themselves, I will take it and LOVE it.

What do you think? This is a new type of blog post for me, where I actually share what we are doing in my classroom. I LOVE to teach, but I don’t have the skill of making incredibly beautiful/shareable things. But I do love doing these types of projects and am happy to share if it is helpful for anyone! I can see where this project is for sure more of a classroom group project, but I think even a homeschool family could work together to make a little community/town!