3D Towns – Second Grade STEM

The second grade students studied shapes and 3D figures in STEM and classroom math prior to accepting this challenge. They used their imaginations and engineering skills to construct a town made of many buildings. They included a library, house, fire station, post office, veterinarian, grocery store, etc. Each team was given 3 buildings to build onto a foam board. The students were required to sketch out their buildings to include the shape or 3D figure to be used for each part of the construction. Once they were ready to begin, they stood above the foam board to see the possible locations of the structures. Squares and rectangles were drawn on the board to show the footprint of the building. This is where it is located and from which it will be built upward. Understanding this concept was a bit challenging for them, but they began to understand how this works in the real world. Once the buildings were up, they began to add details. There were stop signs, stop lights, roads, ponds, flowers, bridges, power lines, etc. Finally, we put all of the foam board sections together to form a 3D town we called “Kitty Town”! It looked amazing! It was a lot of work, but they did great and had fun too.