Hospital Building Challenge

Activity Overview

In this building challenge, we take our growing knowledge of communities and cities and work to create a model of a hospital - an essential part of any community that serves many functions. Students can see this as an architectural challenge, but also as an opportunity to engage in dramatic and block play and explore serving, saving and helping others.

What You Need

• The Hospital on Epic

• Building materials such as MagnaTiles, blocks, Legos, paper, cardboard, furniture and blankets

• Figurines for dramatic play

• Paper and tape or post-it notes for labels and signs

Steps

1. Read The Hospital on Epic, as an entry point to pique your student’s interest.

2. Use the guiding questions below to frame your initial conversation with the student, and help them organize their thinking and plan their building.

Guiding Questions

• What kind of a hospital should we build - one for people or one for animals?

• Who works in a hospital? What kinds of things do the workers in the hospital need?

• How can we make this structure strong? How big should our structure be?

• How many rooms should we make? What kind of rooms?

Extensions

• Use labels (can be index cards with tape or post-it notes) to help your child label the important parts of the building and make signs. They may be able to do this independently (a letter or scribble is just fine!) or may ask you to help with this step.

• Bring people and animals into this play - now that the hospital is built, how will we help our community by using it to help people and animals feel better?