Construction Center

I was doing some reading about how to encourage mature play and one of the recommendations was to organize play items so that they are easy to find and use.  So instead of housing the blocks in wooden boxes, I emptied the shelves at the front of the class and we moved the blocks.

 

Several children spent their Choice Time one day organizing the blocks.  We added the cardboard blocks, soft blocks and coloured blocks to the wooden blocks.  Luckily, I just receive another box of wooden architecture blocks at my last ProD event to add to the collection.

 

The cardboard box holds some Styrofoam pieces, foam pieces and tubular containers that are interesting for building.

This picture was taken several days later.  For about a week the construction center was packed with children every day.  It has since quieted down so that the children can actually have some room to build.  Ask your child what they have built.

It also worked...instead of building small towers or children working on their own creation, students are working together to build large castles or houses and then playing with them.  Another perk is that we now have room to leave the structures up for a few days.