Thursday 30 April 2015

Let's Play Builders

Pretend play offers the opportunity to have fun and try out being someone else, and also develops lots of important early learning skills. Here are some easy ideas you can use to set up your pretend-play building site

  • Stock up a tool box: You can buy some toy tools but your children will love it if you add in some real builders materials too. Try tape measures, big paint brushes, child-size spanners and screw drivers.
  • Nuts and bolts: Twisting nuts and bolts together is great fine-motor practice and the children will relish the opportunity to try out some real builders kit.
  • Hammer and nails: don’t rule out letting your children play with hammers and nails. Yes, they will need you to keep an eye on them but let them have a go with some small hammers. Try using blocks of polystyrene to hammer the nails in
  • Cardboard boxes: add cardboard boxes of different shapes and sizes
  • Add in the right clothes: Providing costumes encourages the children to try on different roles as they dress up.

        

  • Try sand: add trowels and buckets or toy trucks and diggers to your sand pit and let the children experiment with wet and dry sand.
  • Add in some writing for older children: Clipboards and a pencil. Let them sketch out what they are planning to build and write a list of the equipment they need to collect. Add in a tape measure so they can work with numbers too.

Friday 17 April 2015

Welcome!

Welcome everyone to our new blog page. We hope you enjoy the read.