Do You Want to Build a Subway?

Activity Overview

We are continuing our weekly building challenges with a focus on transportation and city planning! These weekly challenges are designed to give a specific focus to block and building work, while allowing children's imagination to come up with new ideas and expand their thinking around building, designing, and planning.

What You Need

• A variety of building materials in your home: blocks, Legos, MagnaTiles, and cardboard boxes are a few ideas.

• Subway Ride (optional)

Steps

1. Talk to your student about the subway system and how it works. Use the book Subway to guide your conversation. You might also choose a text like Subway Ride to help inspire this conversation.

2. Help the student draw a plan for their construction, paying attention to the steps involved in successful building work.

3. Get to work on building the subway! If possible, build in a place where the construction can stay up for a few days so you can revisit it, add on to it, and continue to iterate and develop the student’s ideas.

Guiding Questions

• Where is your subway going?

• What parts do we need to make a subway?

• Who rides on your subway?

• Who is in charge of driving the subway?

Extensions

• Build a subway network (Pro tip: MagnaTiles and Legos allow students to separate subway lines by color!)

• Draw a map to go with your subway to help people get around