Ever thought of involving your children as “neighbourhood planners”? What places would they like to have in their neighbourhood? A garden (Flowers), food centre (Fish Balls), playground, train station or community centre?

Here’s a lesson idea to involve children in planning the places they would like to have in their neighbourhood while giving them opportunities to explore in as many as THREE learning areas through an integrated approach.

Learning Areas	Learning Goals
Aesthetics and Creative Expression (A&C)	LG3: Create art and music and movement using experimentation and imagination
Discovery of the World (DOW)	LG1: Show an interest in the world they live in LG2: Find out why things happen and how things work through simple investigations
Social and Emotional Development (SED)	LG4: Communicate, interact and build relationships with others

Refer to the Nurturing Early Learners (NEL) Framework, pp. 65 to 107, for more information on the learning areas and learning goals.

Learning Objectives

Children will be given opportunities to:

Find out more about the people and places in their neighbourhood.
Make decisions as a class on the places they would like to have in their neighbourhood.
Work together to create a 2- or 3-dimensional model of their neighbourhood.

#1 Finding out about places in their neighbourhood

Get your children to be familiar with places in their neighbourhood!

How?

Go on a neighbourhood walk OR
Show photographs of places in their neighbourhood
Talk about the places in the neighbourhood with your children.

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Examples of common places in a neighbourhood

After the neighbourhood walk, talk about the places in the neighbourhood by:

Using photographs as visual cues to help children recall what they had observed
Asking questions to facilitate the discussion

What types of questions are you asking?

Using open-ended questions will help to engage children in discussion and sustain the conversation. Refer to the Nurturing Early Learners (NEL) Educators’ Guide, Volume 1 pp. 58 to 60, for more information on using questions.

Suggested questions that you can use to encourage the children to talk about the people and places in the neighbourhood:

What is this place?
What can people do at this place?
Why is it important to have a place like this in your neighbourhood?

Lastly, help your children to categorise the places (e.g., places to buy food, places to have fun etc.). This will help them to see connections between different things.

#2 Planning their neighbourhood

Providing opportunities for children to reason and make decisions help to develop their logical thinking skills.

Guide your children to think about:

Places they would like to have in their neighbourhood (limit the number of places to help them reason and make decisions)
Where they would like these places to be in their neighbourhood

How?

Create a neighbourhood map.
Limit the number of “empty” spaces on the map.
Encourage your children to talk about and decide on the places they would like to have and where these places should be in their neighbourhood.
Refer to the categories that arose from the class discussion (e.g., places to buy food, places to have fun etc.) to help your children make decisions.

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Creating a neighbourhood map using nine pieces of A3-sized cardboard

#3 Creating their neighbourhood

Let your children’s creativity flow by creating a model of their neighbourhood using different art and recyclable materials!

How?

Get your children to work in small groups.
Have each group work on one place in their neighbourhood by:

Drawing / Painting OR
Using recyclable materials to make a 3-dimensional model

How can you facilitate group work in your classroom?

You can:

Assign roles to each child to ensure participation (e.g., drawing, cutting, pasting etc.)
Use talking chips so that children take turns to talk
Get children to cast votes when making decisions