Building and Engineering
Activity sheet
Children are born scientists—they love to explore and discover. There are many activities that you can enjoy doing at home with your little scientist.
Questions
•What materials are used to construct a house, a building or a bridge?
•What tools or machines are used to construct a house, building or bridge?
•What shapes can you see in your house (i.e. square windows, rectangle doors etc)?
Try This At Home
Make a House out Of Paper.
You usually need strong materials, such as bricks, to build a strong house. However, you can build a house out of paper (which isn’t very strong) if you use strong shapes. Strong shapes in building include round tubes and triangles. Follow the directions below and build a house using paper and strong shapes.
You Will Need
•Five pieces of A4 paper
•Sticky tape
•A small toy
•Wooden or Lego blocks
What To Do
Find a small toy that you would like to build a house for.
- Use four sheets of paper to make the walls. The paper won’t stand up by itself; it will keep falling down.
- To make the paper stronger and able to stand up by itself fold them into strong round tubes. Fold the four pieces of paper (one at a time) in half (long ways) then roll up into a tube (about the size of a toilet roll). Sticky tape it together. Now use the four tubes as the four corners of the house.
- Put a piece of paper on top as the roof and it will hold in place. Now place a block on top of the roof to be the chimney. The roof will collapse under the weight of the block.
- You can make the roof stronger by folding it into strong triangle shapes. Fold the paper in a concertina shape, back and forth like a fan. There will be many little triangle shapes in the paper now and this will make it stronger. Put the new folded roof onto the tubes and place the chimney block on top of the roof. It will now hold because the roof is made of strong triangle shapes.
- Now your toys can live safely inside the strong paper house.
Did You Know?
•Triangles, tubes, arches and domes are also strong shapes to use when building.
•The tallest building in Canberra is TelstraTower at 195 metres tall.
Try These Other Activities
•Tell (or read) the story of The Three Little Pigs and investigate the strength of different building materials. Build houses for your children’s toys using straw (drinking straws), wood (paddle pop sticks) and bricks (blocks) and investigate which house is stronger and discuss why.
•The top of an egg is a dome shape. Domes are curved like arches and are very strong. When you eat eggs keep the large half of the egg shells. Notice it is a dome shape. Put tape around the broken edge and place at least four egg shell halves on the table. Test how strong they are by placing big books on top. See how many books you can place on top before they break. You can even put a bunch of egg shell halves together to make egg shell shoes that will hold your child’s weight!
•Use blocks and build the tallest tower you can until it all falls down.
Sing Songs
Sing this building song with your child. Don’t forgetthe actions with your arms as walls, floor and roof.
There’s a house
There’s a house with a wall, with a wall,with a wall.
There’s a house with a floor, with a floor,with a floor.
There’s a house with a roof, with a roof,with a roof.
Ooooh, it all falls down!
There’s no house any more, any more.
There’s no house any more!
Read Books
Have fun finding more books at your local library,book store or online.
•Building a House by Byron Barton
•A Year at a Construction Site by Nicholas Harris
•A Day in the Life of a Builder by Linda Hayward
Go On An Excursion
Go on a building and engineering excursion!Here are some suggestions in the Canberra region.
•Go for a walk in your local area and notice howmany buildings have different shapes like circles,rectangles and squares. Notice how many buildingshave strong shapes like triangles, tubes (columns),arches and domes.
•Look for construction sites in your local area.Look at the trucks moving dirt and cranes liftingthings. Look at the foundations of the buildingand the walls being built.
•Visit the tallest building in Canberra, the TelstraToweron BlackMountain (195 metres tall). Go up and havea look out of the observatory and see a wonderfulview of Canberra.
Investigate Websites
There are many websites for children about buildingand engineering. We suggest you start with:
•Play games and do building activities withBob the Builder at
•Investigate different styles of bridges at
Open 9am – 5pm every day. Closed Christmas Day.
Admission fees apply.
King Edward Terrace, Canberra
t 02 6270 2893