“Building Homes of Our Own” is NAHB’s educational CD-ROM — given for free to classroom educators and NAHB members — that provides students with an understanding of the home building and buying process, an introduction to careers, and lessons in community responsibility as they design, construct and sell a 3D home.   

The Master Builders Education Foundation held its second annual Building Your Future, Student Competition and Career Fair for King and Snohomish high school students in May. Approximately 110 students from 20 different area schools attended the event held at the Master Builders’ headquarters in Bellevue, Wash.

The event consisted of three components: a computer competition, a doghouse contest and a career fair. 

The computer competition gave students a one-hour time limit to complete the “Building Homes” program, which uses home building concepts to provide real-world context to classroom math, science, social studies and consumer economics lessons.  The schools had been given copies of the software before the competition so the students had plenty of time for practice. 

“The students were very excited trying to design, permit and sell a home,” Cathy Feole, executive director for the Master Builders Education Foundation, said. “The experience was great and the talent displayed among the competitors was really impressive.”

The doghouse contest, which is judged by builders, gave students the opportunity to use some of skills they had learned playing “Building Homes” to help build a doghouse.  This year, students put a great deal of effort into building 11 doghouses.

“Our doghouse took about a week to build,” Sean, first place winner in the doghouse building competition, said. “It was fun!”

The top contestants were given prizes including a PlayStation Portable (PSP), gift certificates and portable DVD players.

The career fair encouraged students to develop a better insight into different career pathways. It was set up with a timed “round-robin” format to give students face time with as many industry leaders as possible. Students were divided up into small groups and spent seven minutes meeting with each leader before rotating to the next one. 

“It was good, it was nice to meet people from different companies,” Zeke, second place winner in the “Building Homes” computer competition, said.  “I liked that we got to meet them and they had information available.”

“The competition and the building were both great, and the professionals have some really good advice,” Brian, a student participant, said. “It was very worthwhile!”

Feole said the Master Builders Association has enjoyed their experience with the “Building Homes” software and would recommend the program to other HBAs as a successful and easy to use community outreach resource.

“Students get really involved in the computer competition and absolutely love it!” Feole said. “‘Building Homes of Our Own’ is a beneficial way to generate awareness of the industry among students.”

The Master Builders Association of King & Snohomish Counties is just one of the many associations using the “Building Homes of Our Own” CD-ROM to build relationships with their communities and encourage students to explore home building careers.

Since 2002, 47,000 CD-ROMs have been distributed to middle and high school classroom educators reaching an estimated 4 million students, teachers and parents.
The award-winning educational software teaching tool is provided free to classroom educators, public libraries and NAHB members or affiliated associations upon request at www.homesofourown.org.

More information and promotional resources are available to NAHB members and associations at www.nahb.org/buildinghomesofourown.

For more information about this item or to request multiple CD-ROMs, call Gwyn Donohue at 800-368-5242 x8447.
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