Over the past few weeks the children in school age 3 have been exploring building in different ways with different materials. First, the children have been using wooden blocks and magnet blocks to build houses for the toy people. They love to engage in dramatic play as they act out real life situations in their houses and design layouts for each room in their houses. “This can be my room and this is the kitchen. Oh, and that is the bathroom.” The children express with such pride when sharing their creations with peers and educators.
Two friends created a different game with our wooden domino blocks. The boys built tall towers creating almost a city-like area. They had one taller tower in the center and smaller ones surrounding the tall one. The friends agreed on a points system and played a game similar to bowling. Each child made their own paper airplane and they would each take turns throwing a paper airplane towards the towers to knock them down. They added some little beads on edges of the towers so that depending on how many beads they knocked they would get more points. This was a great demonstration of creativity and communication in agreeing on their rules and developing their game.
Some children have enjoyed building with hot glue as they pasted popsicle sticks together to build large structures. Other children have enjoyed making glue creations then allowing it to dry and then continuing to add to the dry glue making a more 3D structure.
This week we received a very generous building set from Santa Clause! The set includes gear like blocks to add movement to the structures. The children were very excited and began building right away. Two friends created a robot that could move in a few different ways. The friends used the instructions provided to make their robot. This was a great demonstration of their reading skills as well as their ability to comprehend and put into action what the instructions wanted them to do. Expressing pride in their work the boys asked “can you take our picture?” suggesting they wanted to remember this moment and all their hard work. These children showed that they made a great team when working together!
We are excited to incorporate some different building tools and see what else we can build with our new Christmas present. When we combine different types of blocks it will be interesting to see how that can affect our structures. Maybe we can have a contest in building with some more difficult materials such as spaghetti noodles and mini marshmallows!
