"Ways" on Wednesdays - Different Ways to Get Kids Drawing and Writing

I've decided it's time to get a little more structure and routine around here, so from now on, Wednesdays will be devoted to talking about 'ways' - ways to get certain things happening in your child's life or ways to use different materials and objects.

Today I'm looking at ways to include drawing and writing in children's play.

Drawing and writing is a great way to build on fine motor skills, eye-hand co-ordination and to get children enthusiastic about expressing themselves on paper.

Some children will happily sit down and draw for hours, relying only on their imagination and creativity. Other children are reluctant drawers and need a reason to pick up a pencil and a piece of paper.

I’ve found one of the best ways to get texta-shy kids drawing is to include pencils, pens, textas, paper and notebooks in their games.

This week I’ve put together some race sheets for my Ed. His favourite thing to do is to line his cars up in a race and talk about the order the cars have finished in. I thought a great way to get him to build on his written literacy skills would be to document the outcome of each race onto a “Race Sheet”. I set out a rough grid and he got together the coloured textas he needed to record the event.

Then he put the races together and coloured in the squares according to the order the cars finished in.



He adopted a letter code for his cars because sometimes he used two cars the same colour.

While he is technically not drawing in a creative, imaginative way, he is practicing some very basic writing skills and using his cognitive skills to record his cars in the order they race in. One of the biggest benefits is that he is just getting used to using textas and paper and recording his experiences. This will stand him in good stead for starting school next year.

There are other great benfits in this play too. He is:

Learning about ordinal numbers (eg. first, second, third)
Problem solving (eg. what to do when 2 cars have the same colour)
Documenting patterns
Using basic graphing skills

Here are some other great ways to include writing and drawing in play:

Encourage children to draw plans before they build with blocks

Always include a notepad and pen in dress up boxes

Cut small pieces of paper to make ‘tickets’ to include in play

Set up a post box with letters, envelopes and stamps



What creative ways do you include drawing and writing in your child’s play?

Another Play Moment

A lot of play at our house involves caring lately. I think it's lovely. Children should be encouraged to model care and empathy. It builds the parts of our brains that deal with these emotions, making us more caring and sharing as adults.

I stumbled across his little play scene Ed had set up the other day.




Apparently it was rest time for the Lightning McQueen brigade and the little blanket was keeping them 'cosy'. Aaaawwwwwwwwww!

A Happy Compromise

One corner of my lounge room looks like this at the moment.



Ok, so it's not going to get my house into an issue of "Home Beautiful" any time soon, but this little space is really working for us.

As I've mentioned before, Em likes to set up her own play a lot at the moment. She likes to move when the mood strikes her and it helps to have resources and toys at her disposal.





Having furniture, accessories, doll's and animals accessible like this means she can play when it suits her and if she wants to leave things a little set-up and come back later, she can take up exactly where she left off without too much hassle. And in the meantime, I'm not left looking at a huge amount of mess which makes me a bit happy too!

We're Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo ......

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo

How about you, you, you
You can come too, too, too
We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo

Don't you just love that song? I do. It's a firm favourite.

Well, during the holidays, we went to the zoo, zoo, zoo - two zoos in fact. The good old Melbourne Zoo and our first trip out to Healesville Sanctuary, which was very delightful and well worth checking out.

In the days following, there were many discussions centred around animals and early one morning, Ed decided he'd like to make his own zoo using our plastic animals.

I helped to set up some enclosures.

We used some great wooden fences



Some old gift boxes



Some upside-down Frisbees



Even some rocks and a blue face washer



I went out into the garden to cut some foliage to make the enclosures seem a little more realistic (and so the animals had something to eat).



When it was finished, Ed drove his cars around the zoo and played out some "family" games with the animals.

Then big sister came along and decided she would like a zoo they could actually walk through. So we packed away the smaller animals and raided the soft toys to see what we could find.

We then set up a bigger zoo that spread through out the whole lounge room.

There was room for monkeys to swing



And pandas to roam



And bears in a cave



And a big pool for the penguins and turtles



I included toilets for the teddies



And a cafe (because no trip to the zoo is complete without a yummy snack), where a fresh morning tea was served after a morning of animal watching and holding.






The children made some signs and got out their cash register. They even made a map.



Then it was time to find some cameras and binoculars and take Hamley and Yarji to the zoo.



It was a great fun morning of play with lots of thinking, talking, remembering, drawing, imagining and learning going on.

And the best bit was, they didn't even have to get out of their pyjamas.

I'm playing along at

More Everyday Play "You Tube" Videos

I've finally put the three play ideas segments onto You Tube that I presented on "9am wih David and Kim" last year. The video you can watch was originally presented as 3 different segments over 3 weeks. I have been trying for months to separate them and put them on You Tube separately, but have finally given up and decided to put them all on together, one after the other.

I love these segments. I feel a little awkward watching myself, but love seeing the video of my little ones when they were much, much younger. I wrote and presnted these segments on my own and given it was only my second time in front of a real life TV camera, I don't think I did too badly (if I do say so myself!). They also include some lovely, simple, everyday play ideas too.

You can watch the videos by clicking here or by clicking on the bottom video image in the side bar.

Learning to Play

Things are changing in the Butler household. My Em is now 7 years old and in the last few weeks or so I've noticed I'm not needed so much at play time when she's around. It seems my years of hard work focussed on encouraging play have truly paid off and Em now runs around finding resources and coming up with play ideas for her and her brother that are above and beyond anything I'm capable of.

As regular readers of this blog would know, I've always put a lot of thought and effort into my children's play. I think about how I organise their toys, what toys they have accessible to them, what other props I can add, what they're interests are and how they like to play. I set up play scenes to stimulate learning and creativity. I love to listen in on their little play scenarios and think about things I can add or bring into their play so they can benefit from what they are doing even more.

I keep checking in on their play as I always have but where I used to offer ideas or help find materials, Em has it all under control now and I find myself hanging around on the outskirts, marvelling at the ideas they've come up with, but a little bit sad that I'm not included as much any more.

Though a part of me longs for the days I was in there with my sleeves pulled up, feeding off their creativity and ideas to make a play scenario bigger and better, I am bursting with pride at the creative, play-loving little girl my daughter has become.

All of those years of fostering interests, collecting resources, encouraging independent play and negotiating arguments have finally meant I can have a few peaceful hours to myself without lifting a single finger. Bliss!! Now I just have to work on the packing up ...........

Homemade Party Hats for Furry Friends

Once upon a time there was a three year old girl named Em who loved to throw birthday parties for all of her soft toy friends almost EVERY SINGLE DAY!



Her mum would help her to organise some 'party food' (using plastic food, real food or playdough), make invitations, blow up balloons, find a make-do cake and invent party games. Her mum would also buy her cardboard party hats for her party guests to wear.

Mum liked to encourage this sort of play because she knew:

• it was a great boost to Em's self-esteem as she got to pretend to be the adult and boss her toys around
• it helped her girl to practice pre-literacy skills as she 'wrote out' invitations
• it was sometimes a great fun art and craft activity when Em felt like making fancy invitations
• her daughter would talk and talk and talk the whole way through the party which was great for her language skills
• it helped Em to process what she understood about social rules and interactions as she sorted out problems that arose between her furry friends
• her little girl was building on all of her fine motor skills as she set things up and made the things she needed
• Em's memory, recall and imagination were getting a big boost too as she remembered what happens at a party and invented her story for the day
• once she was set up and happy with how things were going, Em would spend an hour or so playing on her own as long as mum checked in every now and then
• and it was a whole lot of fun!!

One day, Mum got sick of buying party hats and decided Em could make her own. So, Mum went out and bought a packet of plastic, disposable picnic bowls.

When Mum got home, she turned each of the bowls upside-down and punched a hole in either side with a hole punch. Then Em helped her mum tie some elastic onto each hat.



After that, Em got busy with her art and craft ideas (with a little help getting set-up) and decorated a hat for each of her friends. She put stickers on some and stuck flowers and ribbons on others. It was a great art and craft activity that kept her busy for quite a while.



Those hats are still in the dress-up box today, four years later and, luckily, those furry friends haven't grown a bit!

October PP - Growing Grass

I've been so busy lately, I haven't stoppped to tell you what I've written for Practical Parenting this month. It's an article about growing small patches of grass to include in imaginative play scenes.

I've done this loads of times with Kinder groups and my own kids and it really is a bunch of fun. If you get a chance, have a read and give it a go!

"everydayplay" on You Tube - Pt 1

I'm not sure how many of you remember the play segments I taped for "9am with David and Kim" last year. Well, since the show was axed (nothing to do with my segments, I'm sure!), I've got permission to put the videos onto You Tube. You can hopefully view the first one by clicking onto my sidebar here or, you can click on this link to take you there

I'm not the most tech-savvy person, so it's taken me a little while to get them on (it's supposed to be simple, I know!). I have three more so I'll hopefully get them up and going in the next week or so.

Hope you stop by to have a look. I had so much fun taping them and it's great to look back on my little ones and see how much they've grown. Ed wasn't even 2 when this first one was taped. My how time flies ........

Tall Stories

Amanda (over at "HomeAge") has written a great post this week for the Childhood 101 "We Play" link up about a story her daughter told involving a make-believe cat who had gone missing. Her daughter made up stories about where he could have gone and even made some 'missing' posters to try and find him.

I am such a sucker for these sorts of stories. I just love the way a childs' imagination works and the novel, interesting details they put into their stories just make my heart sing.

My own boy was making up stories when we were all on holidays together. It seemed that while he had his dad to himself for a change, he wanted to fill dad in on all the ins-and-outs of the life of his favourite bear - Yarji.

Here are some of the wonderful facts he shared:

- Em is Yarji's mum and Ed is Yarji's dad
- Hamley (Em's bear) is his best friend
- He loves to eat nuts and apples
- He only drinks milk and boo-boo juice. Boo-boo juice is only for grey bears.
- He loves to make carrot soup. That's the soup he really loves. He doesn't like coconut soup or anything.
- He learnt to fly from a chicken (!!)

I've written these 'facts' down and I'm going to write them up on a sheet of paper, then print out some pictures of "Yarj" that Ed can cut and paste. It will be a custom-made Yarji fact sheet that I'm sure will be enjoyed for years to come. This is going to make a great addition to his "Learning Book"

What wonderful "Tall Stories" are being told by the kids you love? ....

A Shoe Box Garage

Over the weekend, Ed was 'brrming' his cars around his car mat and had invented a story about how the cars were all looking for parks.

I remembered a garage I had made back when I was doing my teaching rounds for some other little boys who were car-mad and decided to make one for my boy.

It really couldn't be simpler. I turned a sturdy shoe box upside down and made two parallel cuts into it at a couple of centimetre intervals (6 cuts in all). I then lifted the piece of cardboard between the cuts and presto!, instant garage doors and ample parking space for cars.

When I originally made the garages for those boys all those years ago, I made the garage openings different widths and heights and gave the boys a selection of different cars so they could experiment with size and fit.

This eventuated with Ed too because he wanted a garage for his long rocket-launcher truck and "Charlie" (as he is called) wouldn't fit in the original garages I made.

So, after a bit of discussion and problem solving, we found a fit for "Charlie".

Find other great play ideas at the Childhood 101 We Play link up

Some Tips to Encourage Independent Play

Following on from my last post, I thought I would share with you a response I gave to someone who contacted me about some tips to encourage her child to play independently.

The little girl in question was around 2 years old, a lover of dinosaurs and a confident, secure child, except when she was at home with mum. Her mum was doing all the right things. She was very in-tune with her daughter's interests, took her to the library, rotated her toys and had always encouraged her to play for periods of time on her own. But lately she had been particularly clingy and was wanting mum to play with her ALL THE TIME!

Here is what I suggested (with a few little tweaks). I've also changed names, because in these times of extreme privacy it seems like the right thing to do.

Hi Sally,
It's pretty normal for Bella to enjoy playing more with you than with herself at her age. From what you've told me, it sounds like she is really starting to enjoy imaginative play and when she plays with you, the stories and characters you make up are probably quite creative and involved. Then when it comes to playing by herself, she may just be having a little trouble keeping herself amused with her own imagination and it's easier if mum does it! This is perfectly normal because her imagination is only just starting to develop. There are lots of things you can do to help her along.

Firstly, don't feel guilty about saying 'no' to her. Teaching her to play independently is a wonderful skill to learn. You're helping her to develop her inner dialogue, her imagination and creativity as well as the confidence to feel comfortable with her own company. Not to mention the self-esteem that comes with working things out and accomplishing things independently. These are great gifts.

The hard part is weaning her off of playing with you. A nice way to go about it is to use a timer. You can say something along the lines of "Mummy has some jobs to do, but I'm going to put this timer on (use the oven timer or a wind up one if you have it), and when the timer goes off, it's going to be Mummy and Bella time and we can do something together".

Then set the timer and go about some jobs as best as you can until the timer goes off.
It's best to ignore resistance as much as you can and just keep reassuring her you will play when the timer goes. It's probably best to set the timer for ten or twenty minutes to start with (whatever you feel she's ready for), so she gets the hang of how it works, then gradually make the time longer and longer. Don't worry too much if she doesn't play at first while she's waiting, she will eventually go and play once she realises you mean business and she gets bored. You could set up a little play scene with her dinosaurs close by and suggest she play there while she waits for you.

For the time being, I would perhaps avoid playing pretend games with her when the timer goes off and use your time together to do a puzzle or play a simple board game. That way, she will associate these things with time spent with you, rather than the imaginative games. It makes pretend play games her domain, which will encourage her to develop these games on her own, becoming less reliant on you.

The other thing you can work on is helping her to develop her imaginative play stories. I do this a lot with my kids. When you are in the kitchen or the family room and catch her involved in her dinosaur play for example, it's great to ask her questions about what is going on to help her develop the story. This also helps to reassure her that you are close by and interested in what she is doing. For example things like "How are the dinosaurs today?" "What's the orange one up to over there", "He sounds cross, what's happened?", "Is she having a swim in the water?". Questions and comments that observe the play Bella is involved in and encourage her to develop the story more on her own.

Another thing I would suggest is perhaps seeing how Bella goes having her toys rotated less frequently. At her age, she will probably enjoy going back to the same toys over and over again. I have found with both of my kids that once they got to around 2, they would play with "pretend play" toys every day and it would be the same ones over and over again.

Children love to re-visit things they've done, pick up where they've left off and recall stories they've made up before. It's a really important part of their brain development. Toys that are great to leave out all the time are basically ones that have unlimited uses - things like plastic animals and dinosaurs, cars, trains, babies and baby accessories, dress-ups and "home corner" play things. You'll know when she is getting bored with these things because her play will stop being as constructive and that's when it's a good time to find new things to do by rotating toys or adding new props.

I hope these tips are helpful. You sound like a switched on mum, very in tune with her little girl and from what you've told me, it sounds like you have a great relationship. As I mentioned earlier, playing independently and enjoying your own company is a wonderful thing to learn and I'm sure it will be only a matter of time before Bella is spending hours playing on her own and you're seeking her out to find out what she's up to. I'd love to hear how you go.

Kind Regards
Belinda

I've had some feedback from 'Sally' and apparently, after some persistence and a few months of sticking to these tips, 'Bella' is again enjoying busy, independent play. Hurray for everyone!

Inspiring Play

Some of you might be surprised to learn, I don't really play with my children very much. Sure, I've been known to put on the odd dress-up and I've certainly eaten a lot of pretend food and drunk many cups of pretend tea, but it's not very often I sit and play with them for long periods of time.

This is completely deliberate. I think child's play is and should be a child's domain and too much involvement by grown-ups can actually remove a lot of the benefits play can provide.

Don't get me wrong, I always keep an ear out to hear how they're playing and I think a lot about what they play with and how they might use it. I also 'check-in' often to ask about what they're doing and offer help and suggestions if it's needed. I guess I try to inspire play and help the kids to build on their own ideas. I think it's really important for their problem-solving, imagination, creativity and ultimately their self-esteem

A great example of this happened on the weekend. The children were busy building with some 'mobilo' close to the kitchen where I was preparing dinner.

Em came up to show me some of what she'd been doing. She had made a perfectly working see-saw. Always keen to extend on what they're doing, I said to her "that would make a great see-saw for one of your 'Littlest Pet Shop' toys, wouldn't it". "Yeah" she yelled and ran back to where she was working to share this new information. "Ed", she said "my 'Littlest Pet Shops' could fit in this see-saw and in all these other things we made". "We could make Littlest-Pet-Shop-Town" he said.

So, they set about it with a new purpose to their building and an extra dimension to their play.





This idea turned a couple of hours of building into an imaginative play game that grew and evolved and blossomed for the whole weekend, giving so many areas a developmental work out. The kids were building on many, many skills including:
- imagination
- creativity
- problem solving
- fine motor skills
- eye-hand co-ordination
- planning
- negotiation
- language skills
- story-building/literacy skills
- concentration



I'm still not allowed to pack it up today

Come over and play at the 'Childhood 101' 'We Play' link up

The Rock Box

Do you like collecting things?

We do, big time!

One of our favourite collections at the moment, something we all seem to be interested in, is Ed's rock collection.



His interest in rocks began at a very young age when he would seek them out and try to eat them. Needless to say, I wasn't encouraging this interest too much when he was sampling the objects of his interest, but as soon as he stopped putting them into his mouth and started to admire their colours, sizes and textures, I started to help him look for his little 'treasures' at every opportunity.

To encourage his interest along, I bought him a special little rock box to keep his rocks in. As you can see from the photo, he has outgrown it and next time we're out, we need to find a new box to keep them in.



Collections like this are great because
1. When you're collecting items from nature, they're absolutely free
2. It gives us something to bond over. We find them together and talk about them and it's nice.
3. It encourages him to notice what's around him and helps him to appreciate nature
4. He loves to look through his rocks, remembering where he got them from (great for his recall and language skills)
5. He likes to sort through them and group them according to size, shape and colour (and sorting and classifying are great pre-numeracy skills)
6. They always get included in his play (building on imagination and creativity)

What do you like to collect at your house?

Making 'Clothes'

I used to take pictures of the kids at play long before I started this blog. I've always put a lot of thought and effort into the toys and materials I provide for them and I liked to look back on the fun things we'd done. The other day I stumbled across this photo of Em and remembered a great fun activity I used to set up for her.



It was around the time when had just turned four and her favourite things to do were to play with her soft toys and plastic animals and do art and craft activities (nothing's really changed!).

I used to get all of her larger plastic animals out onto the kitchen table, along with textas, stickers, long strips of paper, scissors and a stapler.

She would 'dress' each animal one by one in the decorated strips of paper, designing, sticking and stapling as she went.



Then she would line them up in an "Animal Fashion Parade"

Of course, she could never resist making something special for Hamley too.



This activity is not only great fun, it also
- helps her to master the use of sticky tape, scissors and staplers
- gives her practice in measuring and estimating
- works on creativity and imagination
- builds spatial awareness and eye-hand co-ordination
- helps her to practice her drawing skills
- builds on her language skills as she talks about what she is doing
- and gives her yet another way to express and explore her interest in animals

I was thinking it would be great to use wrapping paper as well. I wonder if those trains and cars would like some clothes too?

Come over and play at the 'Childhood 101' 'We Play' link up

Animals, Animals, Animals

I've included a small container of animals in amongst Ed's trains and cars and these are being incorporated in his play more and more. Sure, they generally ride around in the back of a ute or train carriage, or the cars and trains visit a 'zoo' he has set up, but I'm glad to see him including the animals in his made up stories.



Branching out into a new interest area like this helps development in so many ways. It builds on his mental catalogue of objects in his world, builds his memory and recall, helps him to expand his understanding of social rules and norms and encourages him to notice new and interesting facts when we're out and about.

For instance, we visited the museum on Friday and Ed took a great interest in the animals and creatures displayed there, learning the names of new animals and finding out about where and how they live. Talking about and playing with animals at home has really helped to trigger this interest.



I doubt he will ever embrace the animal kingdom in the way he loves his cars, trains and trucks, but it's really important to introduce children to new things and broaden their horizons. Introducing new open-ended, imaginative toys into play is a great way to do this.

A Change is as Good as a New Toy

As I've mentioned earlier, we have a few dolls' houses around the place and one of them (a plastic fisher-price number) is usually a permanent fixture in our lounge room. Ed would pull it out every so often as a house for his cars, but Em (who it belongs to) hadn't visited the house for quite a while.

This changed this week, when the dolls' house took a little trip to playgroup and then ended up in our sitting room rather than in it's usual spot in the lounge room. This has breathed new life into it for Em who has played with it everyday since its shift.

She sets up the most elaborate play scenes and has left me wondering - what is the appeal? It's funny how moving it's location helps her to see it again after ignoring it in the lounge room for a good few months. It makes me consider what other toys we could move around and whether buying new toys is always necessary?.....

What we did on Tuesday

I'm committed to setting up a play experience for Ed everyday this week and I have to admit, yesterday was a real challenge. I work on Monday and Tuesday morning at the local community centre where I run a couple of play-based kid's activity groups. Ed comes along to both of these groups and so by Tuesday afternoon, we are both exhausted.

He put himself to bed as soon as we got home and slept for 2 hours before we had to rush off to get Em from school. After school, we headed off to the library to get some more car and truck books (I can't believe he's not sick of them yet - we keep getting the same ones!!) and then home to make dinner and have a bath.

I decided to squeeze his activity into bath time. There are so many lovely activities you can set up in the bath and most children just love playing with water - it is one of Ed's favourite things to.

I collected up a bunch of plastic containers big and small as well as some disposable plastic plates I had left over from birthday parties. I then got together some plastic animals of varying shapes and sizes. I just put them on the edge of the bath and left the kids to work out what they wanted to do.

Of course, Ed complained that there weren't any cars, but he was happy to just play with the animals for a change. I sat for a while and we talked about sinking and floating and how many animals could fit in the container. We explored concepts of heavy and light, sinking and floating, in and out and large and small, by just letting the kids experiment while we talked about what they were doing. When the experimentation was over, Em and Ed created their own imaginative play game where the animals would travel in their boats to get to an island. The big animals were the 'Mummies" and the small animals were the 'Babies'. Here, they were working on their social skills and developing their self-esteem and sense of self. There is so much learning and developing to be had in imaginative play games and the wonderful thing about siblings is that they learn so much from each other (with a little help from mum of course!).

A House Not Just For Dolls

We have 4 dolls' houses at our house. One holds all our board books, the kid's have one in each of their rooms and the other is a lovely small wooden one that is in the playroom for everyone to use.



A dolls' house is great for development. It provides a lovely back drop for imaginative play games that work on fine motor and language development, cognitive skills and of course those very important social and emotional skills. It's such a lovely place for children to play out the social rules and norms they see going on in their everyday lives.

I found during my teaching years and with my own two kids, that not all children enjoy playing with dolls. But that doesn't mean they have to miss out on the great developmental opportunities the dolls' house provides.

Take my boy for example. The other day I went into Ed's room to find him playing with the dolls' house he had pulled out from under his bed. There was not a doll in sight mind you, his cars had taken over! I quickly gathered up some furniture for him to keep his game going, but snuck back in to take these pictures when he was having a toilet break. He played at this game for a really long time and the cars took on the roles that the dolls usually take.




I've substituted dolls many times for my daughter too, and added props to extend her play. Here are some great things to add to the dolls' house:
- an animal family - cats, dogs, elephants, lions etc
- fairies
- cars
- trucks
- buttons
- rocks
- glass stones
- small squares of felt and/or material
- small grocery boxes with one side cut out of them to act as extra furniture
- paddle pop sticks
- matchsticks
- bottle tops
- small patty pans

A Truckload of Fun

Ed seems to have a particular interest in construction vehicles at the moment. He is obsessed with the "Digger" book we got from the library a couple of weeks ago and loves to play with the 2 dump trucks from his Thomas the Tank Engine collection - Max & Monty.

We've been enjoying some much needed time at home this morning so I decided that instead of just leaving him to his own devices, I would take 5 or so minutes to collect up some materials that would help his imaginative play along a little. Here's what I came up with.



I've noticed he likes to be quite active in his play, everything needs to have something to do, so I thought I would collect up all of his dump trucks and construction vehicles form his various suitcases. I put all of these together in the wooden box. I then got some buttons, rocks and stones to act as "loads" for the trucks to carry and move around. I added the meat trays and container lids to act as places for the trucks to unload and the blocks and road signs to be included as buildings, bridges and well, signs. I didn't add the small squares of material for any particular reason, but I like to just throw things like this into their play and see what they do with it.

Ed had an absolute ball with this set up. I started him off by showing him what I had put out and talking him through what I thought he could maybe use the materials for. I then showed him how the dump truck could unload into one of the trays and left him to it while he got himself going. I find with Ed that if I get too involved, it stifles his creativity a bit, so I went into another room to leave him to it.



The activity provided lots of learning opportunities. He talked the whole time he was playing - to himself about what he was doing, creating voices for the trucks and bossing the vehicles around. He used lots of the technical, descriptive language to talk about the play - loaders, trays, ditches, flat beds, road trains. It gave him the chance to put into play the language he has learned from the books we have read and the shows he has watched about vehicles. This is a really important tool for strengthening what he is learning. He also talked about and explored lots of concepts like big/small, full/empty, loading/unloading, fits/doesn't fit. He also needed to work his fine motor skills when trying to get the small items in and out of the trucks. His brain got a bit of a workout too as he tried to determine which loads would fit in which truck and what cars were small enough and thin enough to fit under his bridge.



The wonderful thing about this sort of play is he could do it on his own. I only needed to set it up for him and then it's totally up to him what happens next and what direction his learning and exploring takes. In the meantime, I had a chance to tidy up, get the washing on and some dishes done. Of course I got lots of updates about what was going on as well as the occasional "this is so exciting". I also had to look at the ditch being built and the cars fitting under the bridge as I walked through the lounge room to put some things away but my involvement and feedback, however brief, sends a really powerful message of "I'm interested in and value what you are doing" which is also valuable for his learning and self-esteem. Can you believe we achieved so much in an hour of free-play with buttons, rocks and a couple of trucks?!