Homes
Background Information & Activities

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Discussing homes is a great way for your children to explore and understand the world around them. It also allows children to discuss what they know and share their personal experiences with others. Review with your children that people live in different types of homes. A home is a place where you live and provides shelter and safety. Homes can come in different shapes, colors, and sizes and they can be made from different materials. Review with your children that a neighborhood is a place where people live, work, and help each other and neighborhoods can have many different homes.

Remind your children that some people live in houses. You may want to show your children different houses and invite them to discuss different houses they have seen. Other people live in apartment buildings, a building divided into different units. Help your children understand that many different families or people can live in an apartment building. People also live in mobile homes, which are homes that can move from place to place. Cabins, castles, houseboats, and even igloos are all kinds of homes. Homes have different rooms which serve different purposes. Discuss the importance and function of different rooms you might find in a home, such as a kitchen, bedroom, living room, basement, garage, etc.

Homes can be different shapes and sizes and can be built from different materials such as wood, brick, stone, metal, and glass. Help your children to understand that people often build homes to help them live in their environment. For example, in areas with heavy rains and flooding, people might build houses on stilts. People also use materials that are readily available to them in their environment to build their homes. The Pueblo, a group of Native Americans, build their homes out of adobe, a kind of thick clay. Indigenous people in parts of Africa and South America use dried plants to build their homes.

A neighborhood is an area where people live, work, play, and help one another. A neighborhood can be made of many homes near each other. The homes in some neighborhoods might be far apart, such as in rural areas. In city neighborhoods, however, homes are much closer together. As an extension of this unit you may want to show your students the Rural, Suburban and Urban movie

Remind your children that an address is information that shows where a home or building is. Cities can have many neighborhoods and neighborhoods can have many different homes, so the address explains exactly where a building or home is located. Your children should learn how to write their own address. We recommend screening the Sending a Letter movie, which teaches exactly how to write an address. An address includes a person’s name, the street number and street, city, state, and zip code. A zip code is a special number the post office uses to deliver mail.

Help your children understand that people live in different kinds of homes, but that everyone uses homes the same way. Homes provide shelter, or a safe place to live.

Homes Teacher Activities – Click Here!

Homes Family Activities – Click Here!

Homes Teacher Activities

© 1999-2009 BrainPOP. All rights reserved.

Home Sweet Home

Have your students draw pictures or make models of their homes by using paint, crayons, cartons, construction paper, clay, blocks, craft sticks, or other items. Encourage them to be creative and use different materials. Then have students share their drawings or models with the class. Make sure students point out different features of their homes. Then discuss how students’ homes are alike and different. How are their real homes alike and different?

Whose Home?

Have students or pairs research different animals. You may wish to assign students different animals or have them pick randomly from a hat. Have students learn about where the animals live and how they build their homes. Some animals are nomadic and do not have homes at all. Have students make models of their animal’s home and share them with the class.

Home Life

Invite students to discuss and describe the people and animals they live with. Some students might live with parents and grandparents, while others might live with aunts and uncles. Some might have brothers and sisters, while other students may not. Some may even live with many pets! You may want to make a bar graph to keep track of the people who live in students’ homes. Encourage students to think about their families and how families can change. What happens when someone moves their home? What changes? What stays the same?

Homes Family Activities

© 1999-2009 BrainPOP. All rights reserved.

Address Book

Have your child create his or her own address book. Be sure to include important contact information of family members, doctors, and caretakers, as well as addresses of their friends and cool places they like to visit, such as a park or a museum. Help your child write down each address. Have your child carry the address book in their backpacks and add more addresses of friends they make at school.

Walk Around the Neighborhood

Take your child on a walk around your neighborhood. Point out different homes and have your child describe or sketch them. How are the homes alike and different? What other buildings are in the neighborhood? You may want to walk with your child to a park or a community center. Discuss who lives and works in your neighborhood, such as friends, family members, police officers, firefighters, and postal carriers. Help your child understand that people who live in a neighborhood help each other.