Day 15: Playing with Junk
Wow! We are half way through the challenge already!
Play prompt
Rummage through the recycling box and pull out some boxes, tubes, milk jugs and whatever else takes your fancy!
Following your child’s lead, create something to play with together!
Ideas
Model Making:
How about..asking if they want to make a junk model? What could it be? What shapes and materials would work best? How shall we attach it together? Let them be designer and planner in this project!
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Cakie asked completely out of the blue to make a rocket the other day. She chose the things we would need to get started. |
When it’s finished you can use it to play imaginative games together or tell stories! C. played with this space rocket for many days, filling it with her play people and taking them on journeys to outer space!
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Her finished space rocket! Complete with opening door and ramp for her little people to climb inside. |
Play in a box!
I won’t say much about boxes here as they are a whole topic of another play challenge soon, but how about playing inside one (or two?!) It can become anything your child’s imagination wants. Add other bits and pieces to make buttons, levers, windows, doors…anything! Or simply get inside it and doodle all over it!
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The girls made theirs into trains, cars, houses and then coloured all over the inside and outsides! |
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She loved playing with her wooden beads in a large egg carton and played with this many times over. Free play at its best |
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Pop exploring a milk jug and duplo blocks! |
Adapt for baby:
How about cutting holes into a milk
jug or cardboard box and letting your
little one fill and empty it with blocks,
large buttons, bean bags etc? Lots of
hands-on investigation and learning!
Make a structure!
Jamie has a fabulous post on Hands on as we Grow about building ramps and driving on them with cars. Check it out here for another fabulous, open-ended
play idea!
Discovery Boxes
Or check out the list of all the Discovery Box ideas we have put together on this blog, all using recycled or everyday materials for investigative play!
Tomorrow hands on: as we grow will have the challenge for day 16!
Oh, we’ll be digging through the recycling today to see what we can find! I’m even curious what we’ll create today! This is so open-ended!
Oh! Our recycling has just been collected but we’ll definitely be trying out the ‘lets see what we can make with rubbish’ next week. In the process of making Dinoland out of bits and boys. Think Blue Peter’s Tracey Island but for dinosaurs and safari animals 🙂
I like the milk jug with a hole for toys! I’ll have to remember that one the next time we have a baby that age, although my 2 year old may not have totally outgrown that one.
We play with TIRES! One man’s flat is a preschool child’s treasure!
http://exploringtheoutdoorclassroom.blogspot.com/2011/11/increasing-focus-through-loose-parts.html
I’m late joining in. I’ve got my mission statement written and can’t wait to see tomorrow’s challenge.
I’m a bit late with blogging about this challenge, but we did make a train from some egg cartons and Ewan painted for an hour. http://mizflurry.blogspot.com/2011/11/hopc-dag-15-spelen-met-afval.html