Description
What our Homes of the World lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Homes of the World introduces students to the wide variety of places throughout the world people call a house or home. Many young students do not realize that everyone does not live in a house or apartment like theirs, and a home in another part of the world may be much different. However, it is stressed that regardless of the physical design of a living space, it is still a home to those who live there, and the size and location does not change that fact or make anyone better, worse, good, or bad. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to define house and home, identify homes from around the world, compare the different homes and list some characteristics of the homes. This lesson is for students in 1st grade, 2nd grade, and 3rd grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the orange box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand. The supplies you will need for this lesson include clay, craft sticks, straws, cardboard, glue, tape, and the handouts.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. To adjust the lesson activity, you can have students draw their new home instead of constructing it. They can also make a model of one of the eight types of homes from the lesson instead of making up their own. Your class can even create one or more large-scale model of each home type together. For an additional activity, you can have your students dream rooms for their dream home. Finally, you can invite an architect to speak to your class about home design.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
HOMES OF THE WORLD LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Homes and Houses
The Homes of the World lesson plan includes four content pages. The lesson begins by asking students where their house and home are. Houses are buildings where people, usually a family or small group of people live. Homes are places where someone usually lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household. In short, houses are buildings while homes are places. Your house can also be your home. People all over the world live in different kinds of houses, while some people don’t have a house at all and instead live on the street, in a park, or in a shelter. Some people might live in jails or prisons, hospitals, or another place where someone else takes care of them. These people may not consider these places their homes because they don’t want to live there.
If you go on vacation and stay in a hotel, that could be your home away from home. You might still think of it as a home because your family is there. You might think of a relative’s house as your home. If you go to camp during the summer, your temporary home will be a cabin or tent.
Homes are special to the people who live in them. They usually live with family, friends, or other people. Some people live alone, which is still special because people can visit them there, they keep their belongings there, and they take care of their space.
The size of your home does not matter. Some people live in bigger houses, but it’s okay to live in a small home, shelter, cabin, or even tree house. We build homes out of all kinds of materials, like wood, brick, ice, mud, grass, and more. We can build them on land or in the water.
Types of Homes
A long time ago, people would travel from place to place and make their homes in tents or caves, traveling in search of food. When we learned how to farm and grow our own food, we started building permanent homes and stayed in one place for long amounts of time.
Across the whole world, we have many different kinds of houses, some small, some large. Some homes stand on their own in the middle of a farm, on top of a mountain, or in the middle of a forest, Other homes stand close to each other in cities, in an apartment building, or on a street.
Most homes have roofs, an entrance (usually with a door), and a window or opening. Some homes have many more rooms and features, like garages, fireplaces and chimneys, multiple bedrooms, a porch or deck, or a hole in the floor to catch fish from water underneath the home.
The lesson then lists and describes seven types of homes found all over the world.
Brick House, Snow House, House Boat
You can find brick houses all over the world. People often use brick instead of other building materials like wood, stone, mud, and straw. They make the bricks using molded clay which they dry and fire in an oven. Bricks are very sturdy.
You can find snow houses, or igloos, in the Arctic, Alaska, and Greenland. People make them from snow blocks built into the shape of a dome. The temperature inside a snow house can be 60° F, even when it’s -100° F outside!
Some people live in house boats, which can be small or as large as a two story house. People who live in them cook and sleep inside the boat. Some people use them for vacations while other people live in them year-round.
Cave House, Yurt, Stilt House, Mud House, Underground House
In the early days of humans, people often lived in caves. You didn’t need to build anything, as the caves already existed, but you could also carve them out of hard or soft rock as needed. We can still find some of these in China, Turkey, Spain, and the United States.
Yurts are shaped like a circle with wooden frame with felt flaps. You can easily move them from place to place, because they’re light enough for horses and yaks to move. You can find most of these in Central Asia, and Mongolia in particular.
Stilt houses sit above the ground on top of stilts. This protects them from flooding and animals. You mostly find them near coastal areas and they’re common in Southeast Asia.
You can find mud houses in Africa, parts of South America, India, China, and Southeast Asia. People make them from mud combined with sticks, oil, and cattle dung. This makes them very sturdy.
People first used underground houses during the 600s in North Africa as defense against enemies. In the Sahara region, people use them to protect from the hot temperatures. You can also find them in Italy, Turkey, and China.
Conclusion
We can find many more kinds of homes all over the world. Homes don’t have one specific design, and there is no right or wrong house. You could build a home out of anything.
We often build homes based on the climate. If you live in a place where it’s warm all year, your house might not need heat and might have fewer windows. If you live in a rainy place, you might want a stilt house and definitely would not want a yurt.
Many people, in cities and elsewhere, also live in large brick apartment buildings. Several hundred families could live in one of these buildings. Each apartment has its own bedrooms, kitchens, and bathrooms. In some parts of the world, however, these kinds of buildings have shared bathrooms or kitchens.
Homes come in different shapes, sizes, and materials. They are special places for people to live, spend time with family and friends, and be comfortable.
HOMES OF THE WORLD LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Homes of the World lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
HOME BUILDING ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
Students will work with a partner to complete the activity. Each pair will work together to build a house using the supplies provided to them by their teacher. They will design their own home, first sketching it and then building it. It must have two or more rooms and should be sturdy. They will also answer questions about their home, like who will live there, where it will be located, and how many people can live there.
Students may also work either alone or in groups for the activity.
HOME DESCRIPTIONS PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet asks students to first match the description to the correct type of home. Next, they will determine whether different statements are true or false.
HOMES OF THE WORLD HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
For the homework assignment, students will fill in the blanks using the word bank. They will then label each type of house shown in the pictures.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
