Houses in our Community

People need shelter. Most people live in houses or apartments. Houses are many different shapes and sizes. They are made of many different building materials. The most common building materials are wood or brick or concrete.

Some houses stand alone, some are joined to each other. Some have big gardens and some have small or even very tiny ones. Some people live in big buildings of many homes on many floors.

The way some houses look changes according to where the community is. Houses can look different in different countries too. In hot places, houses are made with big windows so that air can flow through. Some are raised high so that air can flow under the house and the higher breezes can flow into the house. In cold places, windows are smaller to help keep warmth inside. In places where it snows in winter, a house roof has to be steeper to allow the snow to slide off.

Traditional houses and building materials

Long ago, people made homes out of materials easily found in the place where they lived. In places where there is ice all year round, some made homes out of blocks of ice. These were called igloos. In some hot places, houses were made of sticks covered with mud and the roof was made of grass. Today, many building materials such as concrete and timber are available wherever people live in the world.

Some old building materials and building methods are still used today though. Big blocks made of mud and dried in the sun are used to build houses with thick walls that are then covered with liquid mud. This is called adobe (say uh-doe-bee), and the thick walls keep the house cool during the hot days and warm in the cold nights. A similar building method is to build walls with bales of hay and then add a thick coating of mud. Hay bale houses are cool in the heat and keep warm in the cold times.

An adobe house in Mexico

Homes that move

Some people even make their homes on boats.

A Chinese junk is a large boat, but some smaller boats are homes too.

In places in Europe and the United Kingdom where there are canals, or rivers made by humans, people still live on boats called canal barges.

Some people live in houses on wheels, called caravans or mobile homes.

What is your home like? What are the houses in your community like?

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If you use any part of this in your own work, list it in your bibliography like this:
Sydenham, S. & Thomas, R. Houses in Our Community [online] kidcyber.com.au (2010)