Have you ever read the book The Little House? It's an absolutely beautiful story about the changes that a house and community go through from day to night, season to season, and eventually over years and years of time.
We used the CHANGE and CAUSATION concept keys to unlock our thinking and discuss some of the changes we observed in the story and what may have been the reasons for them:
We used the CHANGE and CAUSATION concept keys to unlock our thinking and discuss some of the changes we observed in the story and what may have been the reasons for them:
- One of the changes is when the little house is in the country. It's all green and she can tell when the seasons are changing, but in the city it's all grey. The city came to the house. (Maryam)
- It changes over time because in the city she can't see light or seasons because they're blocked. (Scarlett)
- The house and grass look different in all the seasons and people are doing different things. Night also changes to day and repeats again and again like a pattern. (Miri)
- First the buildings in the city were brown and ugly and they changed then to bigger and nicer ones. (Quinn)
- It's construction making things bigger and bigger around the little house. They dug down in the ground to make a car park. Also the little house got all rusty. (Bailey)
- Before somebody used to live in the house, but then nobody did. The the great-great granddaughter found a solution for the house to live in it and move to the country. Also, in each season, the colour of the house changes. (Chloe)
- At the beginning, the house was pink, then turned red, then brown-ish, then definitely brown. Then the house was very old and parts were broken. Then they moved to the house and painted it again. (Evangelina)
- First the house was smiling, then it was sad in the city. (Andy & Esther)
- The house gets more and more broken. (Esther)
We also learned how to show change over time by making a timeline:
We enjoyed this activity so much that we then created our own individual timelines about our community using our imaginations about what it may have been like in the past and might be like in the future. We used these individual timelines as ideas for story writing.