Beech Class at St Philip’s Marsh Nursery School has caught the building bug recently, with the team following the children’s lead and making some exciting changes to the classroom.
It all started with the bricks, with children building towers, giggling as they tumbled down, creating enclosures for small world animals and using the larger bricks to make walkways to balance along. Seeing such enthusiasm for building, the team transformed the brick area into a dedicated building site, adding wooden tools, plastic hard hats, cones, tape measures, clipboards and pictures and books of real building equipment. The children have taken to it brilliantly, with role play naturally flowing alongside lots of fantastic mathematical language and early mark-making.
When the children showed they wanted to build even higher, the team introduced a big collection of cardboard boxes – and the results have been brilliant to watch. The children have been working together, problem-solving and supporting each other to keep those towers standing and to get the higher boxes into place. This kind of collaborative play is so valuable, building communication skills, resilience and early engineering thinking all at once.
These responsive approaches show how closely the team observe and respond to children’s interests, creating expanded learning opportunities that develop creativity, mathematical thinking, physical skills and collaborative problem-solving through meaningful, hands-on play.