Beech Class at St Philip’s Marsh Nursery School has caught the building bug, and we have been following their lead with 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, we 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 the role play naturally flowing alongside lots of fantastic mathematical language and early mark making.
When the children showed they wanted to build even higher, we 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.
