Building
Thanks for joining us!
This episode was written by Kara and voiced by Kara and T.
Episode art was drawn by Jean.
It was originally released in February 2025.
— We love these books the celebrate construction —
Click on each photo for a link to the book on our Bookshop.org account
— And these about being an architect —
— Create your own buildings with these fun toys —
Magnetic MAGNA-TILES and PicassoTiles
The most incredible new toy of the last decade. They last forever. Kids enjoy playing with a few but you can never have too many. There are many types of sets, but we had to include this Builder one for any construction lovers!
Tabletop Hardwood Blocks from Lakeshore Learning
Classic wood blocks that invite hours of play and help kids start to understand building principles.
The Ultimate Fort Builder from Lakeshore Learning
Encourage larger-scale building without having to figure out how to drape and support blankets across your living room furniture.
Duplo sets by Lego
They’re large, easy to handle, colorful, and a beautiful introduction to building. My 1 year old and 6 year old still both enjoy building with them (even though the 6 year old is also in full Lego land.)
And a building bonus for this truck and excavator set being construction themed!
— Buildings in real life —
T using rocks to build at the Presidio Tunnel Tops Park in San Francisco, an incredible play space that includes a designated rock garden.
Sagrada Família
Designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí
The stone facade on the exterior of the Sagrada Família
Interior images highlight the forest-like stone columns and colorful stained glass windows
— Building Episode Summary —
How have you been building? —
There are so many fun things to build with – Legos, Duplos, MAGNA-TILES, Lincoln Logs, blocks, boxes, cards, straws, stacking cups…
Each of them are a little different. They’re made of different materials. Wooden blocks are made of wood. Duplos are made of plastic.
The way things are made affects the way that you can build with them. With Legos and Duplos, you have to fit the holes with the bumps. MAGNA-TILES have magnets inside that help them stay strongly connected.
Do you ever make forts? If so, you may have noticed that when you make one, it helps to have a strong foundation on which to build. The side walls need to be stiff to support the top. And the type of cloth you put on top, how heavy it is and the material it’s made out from, affects how well the top will stay up.
We can build out in nature —
What have you built in nature? Maybe a sandcastle? When you do, you need to have the right materials – water and sand – to mix together. It also helps to have tools.
We can also build things like forts out of sticks. If you gather a bunch of sticks that are the same height, you can spread them apart at the bottom and have them meet at the top, creating a kind of pyramid.
People have even found ways to build with rocks! In fact, there’s a word for a rock pile made by people on purpose. Cairn. Cairns are sometimes made to mark things, so people know where something is.
And it’s not just humans who build things in nature, so do other animals! Birds build nests out of things like twigs, leaves, grasses, and feathers. Beavers build dams out of sticks and mud. Bees turn beeswax into honeycomb and use to a build a beehive.
Making buildings & construction sites —
The word “building” is kind of a funny one, because there are different ways to use it! There’s the doing of building. The work of building something. And then there’s also a building. A building can be a thing! A structure. It usually has a roof and walls and stays where it was made.
You may see people doing building around where you live! We often call that construction.
On a construction site, there are often lots of people. They all have a particular job to do and it takes all of them to get the work done. They wear hard hats to protect their heads and sturdy shoes, just in case anything is dropped on their feet! It’s really important to be safe on a construction site because there are a lot of things happening.
First, a foundation needs to be laid out of concrete. Then, the walls need to be built, and are held up with wood and steel. The roof is put on. The windows go in the walls. Metal and plastic pipes are being installed.
To do all of these things, workers use tools! Tools like saws, hammers, screwdrivers, jackhammers.
And sometimes they also use special vehicles to get their job done. Like a dump truck, excavator, bulldozer, crane, digger.
On some construction sites, the workers are building one building, like a house. Where perhaps a few people live. And, people can build a larger building like an apartment building that has many homes within it! Or a school with a lot of classrooms. We can build something even bigger, like a skyscraper!
Architects, planning buildings, and La Sagrada Família —
When we build with blocks, sometimes we just start and see where we end up. But when you make a building, you need a plan! You need to know where each room is going to be, every piece of wood, every brick. If you’re building a house, you need to think about where the electricity will go and the pipes for the plumbing.
It’s the job of an architect to figure all of this out. An architect designs a building, makes plan for how it’ll be built, and makes sure things go according to that plan. What an amazing job, to create whole buildings that didn’t exist before you figured out how to make them!
There are ways to still have a strong building, but make it look different from what people are used to seeing. And some architects are known for thinking differently!
One Antoni Gaudí, a Catalan architect who was born over 100 years ago. He created incredible, unique buildings. Some have wavy walls or ceilings. The windows aren’t always perfectly straight lines, they have curves and colorful glass. The roof of one of his most famous buildings has colorful tiles that remind me of fish scales. And he used a lot of different materials like stone, glass, iron, ceramics - all combined on one building.
His most famous creation, a church in Barcelona Spain called La Sagrada Familia, is one of the most incredible buildings I’ve ever seen. You can see it easily from far away, it rises high above the other buildings in the city. When you get up close, you see three outside walls, called facades, and they’re all different from each other! One facade is covered with detailed stone carvings that, when you see it all together, looks like a drip sandcastle!
And when you get inside…wow! There are huge stone columns that rise high up into the middle of the building, and then branch out at the top, making them look like stone trees. He wanted the inside to feel like a forest, and it does. And because Gaudí chose to put in colorful glass, not just clear windows, when the sunlight shines through, it feels like you’re inside a rainbow!
His buildings remind people of things we see in nature - trees, waves, bones, plants, and animals.
And now, we can actually use real nature in building, not just be inspired by shapes from it. There are things called living buildings, where there are trees and grass on the roof, or plants growing out the walls. These buildings are good for the people who live in them and the environment they’re built in.