This page contains information to support educators and families in teaching K-3 students about homes. The information is designed to complement the BrainPOP Jr. movie Homes. It explains the type of content covered in the movie, provides ideas for how teachers and parents can develop related understandings, and suggests how other BrainPOP Jr. resources can be used to scaffold and extend student learning.

Discussing homes is a great way for your children to explore and understand the world around them. It also allows children to discuss what they know and share their personal experiences with others. Review with your children that people live in different types of homes. A home is a place where you live and provides shelter and safety. Homes can come in different shapes, colors, and sizes and they can be made from different materials. Review with your children that a neighborhood is a place where people live, work, and help each other and neighborhoods can have many different homes.

Remind your children that some people live in houses. You may want to show your children different houses and invite them to discuss different houses they have seen. Other people live in apartment buildings, a building divided into different units. Help your children understand that many different families or people can live in an apartment building. People also live in mobile homes, which are homes that can move from place to place. Cabins, castles, houseboats, and even igloos are all kinds of homes. Homes have different rooms which serve different purposes. Discuss the importance and function of different rooms you might find in a home, such as a kitchen, bedroom, living room, basement, garage, etc.

Homes can be different shapes and sizes and can be built from different materials such as wood, brick, stone, metal, and glass. Help your children to understand that people often build homes to help them live in their environment. For example, in areas with heavy rains and flooding, people might build houses on stilts. People also use materials that are readily available to them in their environment to build their homes. The Pueblo, a group of Native Americans, build their homes out of adobe, a kind of thick clay. Indigenous people in parts of Africa and South America use dried plants to build their homes.

A neighborhood is an area where people live, work, play, and help one another. A neighborhood can be made of many homes near each other. The homes in some neighborhoods might be far apart, such as in rural areas. In city neighborhoods, however, homes are much closer together. As an extension of this unit you may want to show your students the Rural, Suburban and Urban movie

Remind your children that an address is information that shows where a home or building is. Cities can have many neighborhoods and neighborhoods can have many different homes, so the address explains exactly where a building or home is located. Your children should learn how to write their own address. We recommend screening the Sending a Letter movie, which teaches exactly how to write an address. An address includes a person’s name, the street number and street, city, state, and zip code. A zip code is a special number the post office uses to deliver mail.

Help your children understand that people live in different kinds of homes, but that everyone uses homes the same way. Homes provide shelter, or a safe place to live.

Filed as:  Homes, Social Studies