Materials Needed

• Architectural plans of Tod House (found on-line)
• Drawing paper, graph paper, pencils and rulers
• Architectural books to help define terms
• Map of the city/town
• Multicoloured Pushpins
• Census information from Statistics Canada or from the Regional District in your community

1) During class, have the students do a detailed sketch of their house from memory, having them try and recall such details as:

• The number of stories in their house
• The number and style of windows
• What kind of roof it has
• What type of material it is constructed from
• Decorative detailing

2) After the children have completed this, explain that there are different ways to draw a building, such as a sketch, a more detailed record, cross sections, elevations, and measured floor plans. For homework, have the students do a more detailed drawing of their house as they observe it. Encourage them to use graph paper and rulers to try and get spacing as accurate as possible. Get the students to detail the building materials where possible in the sketch.

3) When the children have brought their "detailed" drawings to class, post them beside the "memory" drawings and record comparisons. Which provides the most information? Post all the class drawings up and have students look at the different styles of housing. How many do they observe? What kinds/categories are they? How many students live in each kind? Compare it with the types/categories of housing that are stipulated by the Statistics Canada Categories. Are there any kinds of housing, single family, multipurpose dwellings from the classroom survey that aren't represented?

4) Gather the tabular classroom information and convert the information to a graph. Have the students take the tabular information from the areas Regional Planning census statistics and convert into a graph. Post results on the wall and compare.

5) Get different coloured pins to represent each type of housing (i.e., a pink pushpin for single family residential housing, a blue for apartment building,) and pin on a map of the city of where each students house is located according to the colour of the pin. Are their patterns emerging on the map? Discuss how city communities are zoned for different types of housing with the class.