If the house site is set back from the road or there’s been a lot of digging and earth-moving a contractor would bring in a roller to smooth things down and pack the earth for a solid driveway. Perhaps while the roller was smoothing and packing the builders would put up the stakes and string to mark the foundations for the backhoe.
Here you can see the roller doing its job with the stakes and string for the house foundation in the background.
Lots of good fine motor skills work here: cutting, gluing, following directions and working on pincer movement to place the stakes (toothpicks) and string.
Materials:
Construction paper: black, brown, and red
Cardstock to assemble the picture on
Two brads
Yarn
Toothpicks broken into short pieces (halves or thirds work well)
Marker
This pattern [download id=”5614″]
Cut out the pieces as shown on the pattern and use the dots to mark the cardstock for your “stakes and string”.
Break several toothpicks into short pieces and glue them with one end on the dots and the other end pointing up towards the top of the paper. School glue works better than a glue stick here, but you will need to let the “posts” dry before adding the yarn “string” to the foundation pattern.
Assemble the roller and draw a road for it to smooth down. Once again the preschooler can practice cutting skills by cutting dirt for the road.
Here’s a steam roller at work!
Love the idea of using brads to create “movable” parts in this craft!
Bull will actually sit down and play with his “house-building” trucks and make up stories about what they do. The moving parts really help…K