Bringing Construction Play to Life

Are you looking to add a little more construction play to your settings? Amy Grant, a primary school teacher, mum to Tilly and the woman behind the inspirational Instagram account @tillystoys shares her expertise on how to bring construction play to life.

What is construction play?

Construction play is all about building, shaping, and manipulating things to create something new. I will start by saying that as an adult, it can be hard to be ‘hands off’ when it comes to construction play. The urge to create, build and help is there in all of us. My biggest tip is to stop, step back and just observe. With construction play, the play is more about the process and the skills involved within it than the end result.

Construction play can be hugely beneficial. Skills involved in it include planning, drawing, assembling, balancing, stacking, testing, and evaluating. It is true hands-on learning and helps children make sense of the world they are in. It allows them to explore different materials and how things fit together.  Also, it can help with learning new vocabulary as well as working collaboratively with peers. Plus, children get to experience failure and develop resilience as they try again in a different way. In the end they get to feel that wonderful sense of achievement and pride when they achieve their desired outcome.

Construction play materials

Construction play is one of those wonderful things that has almost endless possibilities and it can be as big or as small as your space allows. Most things that you might have within your setting can be used in some way for construction play. Cardboard boxes, sticks from the garden, blocks, bricks etc.  Have you ever walked into your living room at home to find all your sofa cushions on the floor and a happy child grinning out from amongst them? That’s construction play in action!

The Big Branch Block Builders are perfect for using alongside natural materials to create a small world set up. Tilly and I both love that they have a natural appearance and are made from real branches. She can easily slot them together to make simple, or with a little patience, quite complex structures. Her favourite way to play with them is on a tray of sand for added stability.

STEM experiences

Working with construction materials provides children with the opportunity to develop their maths understanding by using number language, exploring shape and space, estimating and measuring, making predications and recording results. All of these skills form part of early STEM experiences in an exciting way. Early maths learning through construction play is focused on calculating, shapes, counting and the language of measurement. How big, how tall, how wide, how long a model will need to be. Children are constantly planning, testing, and evaluating in construction play.

Set challenges

With this in mind, I set Tilly the challenge of building a simple bridge with the Guidecraft Tabletop Notch Blocks. I promised to be on hand to help if need be but she was the leader in the activity. The notched parts of these blocks easily connect to make strong builds and I was glad that they are plastic and therefore waterproof. Due to this, she extended her challenge by adding a river underneath and experimenting to see how strong the bridge was. The teacher in me was rejoicing as there was so much lovely learning wrapped up in this play!

Construction play really does have limitless possibilities and with a few, carefully chosen resources, you can provide endless opportunities for children to build and explore.