Kindergarten Castles

I think it is very important for my students to understand what kinds of careers an artist can go into. One art career that I introduced to my kindergartners this week is architecture. I explained to the students that an architect designs buildings before they are built. Builders need to see an architect's drawings to know how to build a house, store, or hotel. I explained that an architect has to draw many drawings; different view of the building (front, side, back, etc.), as well as pictures of how the rooms will be laid out on the inside of a building. We also talked about different buildings that architects design: schools, stores, hotels, libraries, etc. Then, I told them that there's a special name for a kind of house that's really big, that a king and queen live in. They all knew I was talking about a castle!

Next, I showed the students some photographs of castles. We noticed things like towers, turrets, and many many windows on the castles. Then, my students had to pretend that they were architects, and design a castle that they would like to live in some day. Here are their drawings:

To aid the students' drawings, I showed some resources that I had made. First, I had two basic steps that all of the students had to start out with:

Next, I had some ideas that the students could use. I purposely have ideas that don't work with each other so the students have to make choices. I also was very clear that the students might have their own ideas as well, and they could add things that aren't shown in my pictures. Here are my ideas:

 

And finally, a teacher example: