Kids will revel in this fascinating book from author and illustrator Jonathan Bean about his family’s years-long process of building their home by hand. Then make it come to life by building your own home foundation with some construction trucks, a patch of dirt and your kids’ imaginations!

When this book arrived in our home, our kids couldn’t put it down. It was a non-stop read for months. They pored over every page, every illustration, asking questions about everything from ‘how does electricity work?’ to ‘why is it called the north star?”

The story chronicles Jonathan Bean’s family’s painstaking process of moving from their home in the city and living in a camper on a farm in the country while they built their new home by hand.

Bean’s family built their home day in and day out, in all seasons and all weather, for 4 years. Jonathan and his siblings helped right alongside their parents. It is a story of hard work, endurance and family bonds.

And it is also the most interesting and engaging construction manual you could ever share with a child. Hammers and shovels, backhoes, wheelbarrows and homemade cement mixers. Setting the corners of the foundation, building a form to pour a concrete basement, even a frame-raising party. Plumbing and electricity, windows and the roof – it’s all there.

Your kids will delight in every detail!

Jonathan Bean’s well-chosen words are rhythmic and almost lyrical, finding a soothing cadence that draws children in. But while the words are not to be missed, don’t turn the pages too fast as you’ll certainly want to linger over each picture.

This book is an absolute treasure trove of curiosity for kids – and that kind of curiosity sparks the best imaginative play.

If this book isn’t in your home library (and it should be!), grab your copy here then head outside for a fascinating construction adventure with your kids.

(If you have just girls, please don’t skip this book! I am willing to bet they will be just as enthralled as the boys and there is so much here to be learned and enjoyed.)

First Grab Some Trucks

If your kids have some construction trucks, gather them up and head out to a patch of dirt in your yard. If you don’t have any trucks, I highly recommend getting some (yes, even for girls!). The imaginative play, fine motor skills and real-world learning that come from using play trucks are just too important for your little ones to miss.

Here is the fleet we gathered for our home building activity:

Now, Start Digging The Foundation

We used hand shovels and excavators to scoop our dirt from the ground, then dumped the dirt into our dump trucks. If you don’t have any of those tools, a large spoon or ladle from the kitchen would work just fine.

Next, we took all of that extra dirt to the “dump.”

Here is our hole ready for its foundation.

Set The Corners of the Foundation

One of my favorite illustrations in the book shows Jonathan Bean’s father using the light of the north star to set the corners of the foundation. You can almost feel the cold, quiet solitude of that night. I am always moved by the contrast of this single, humble first step with the enormous job that one can sense lies ahead.

We used small sticks to mark the four corners of our little house.

Gather Some Wood To Build The Form

In Building Our House, to pour the concrete foundation, Jonathan Bean’s family had to build a form all the way around the perimeter of their home. It was basically two parallel wooden fences and the space between the fences was filled with stacks of large rocks and then cement poured over top to harden in the crevices. Once the concrete hardened, they took the forms down and the concrete walls remained.

We gathered some long pieces of tree bark and mulch to build our “forms.”

Our 5 year old’s form was long and linear and resembled the one in the book.

Our 3 year old’s form was a little more modest.

Gather Rocks To Make Concrete

Now that the forms for the foundations were set, it was time to make the concrete. Just like Jonathan Bean’s family, we headed to the “quarry” (a rock pathway on the side of our house) to gather some stones.

Even baby sister got in on the action.

If you have an older baby or young toddler, they will love picking up rocks and dropping them one by one into a dump truck (or bucket or pot – the louder the container the better!) so don’t leave them out of the activity.

Now that you’ve gathered your rocks, make sure you drive them back to the “construction site.”

Now pour the “concrete” into the form.

Harden the Foundation and You’re Done!

While the holes were just filled with rocks, I asked our kids to run their hands over the rocks and tell me if the foundation felt wobbly or firm. They agreed it felt wobbly and wasn’t a very good foundation yet.

I suggested they use the extra dirt that they had excavated from the ground to backfill around the rocks. They filled the remaining space in the hole with dirt and used our steamroller trucks to smooth out the surface.

I had the kids feel the foundation again to see if the rocks still felt wobbly. Not anymore! It was a bit of a light bulb moment for my kids to feel and experience the difference between a wobbly and a solid foundation and understand the importance of making it solid.

This foundation is now ready for a house!

Additional Activities

If your kiddos’ attention spans are still going strong (at this point, ours were not so the activity wrapped up), here are a few ideas to keep the construction going.

• Use blocks, Lincoln logs or just plain old sticks to build a house on top of the foundation
• Crush some rocks with a hammer and mix the rock powder with a little water to create “cement”
• Stack and balance rocks on top of each other to make rock towers. See how high you can stack the rocks before they topple over!
• Use a bucket of water and a brush to wash your dirty construction trucks
• If your child is interested and ready, start talking about cardinal directions. Show your child which way is north, south, east and west. Which way does your house face? Which way does the house your child just built face?
• Use Jonathan Bean’s beautiful text on the “setting the corners of the foundation” page to explain the direction the sun moves across the sky and how it affects the different sides of a house. Consider drawing your child’s attention to the rooms in your home that get a lot of morning sunshine and the ones that get a lot of afternoon sun. Do the morning-lit rooms look the same in the afternoon?

Did your family enjoy this book? Let me know in the comments below!