During the summer break before our new school year started, we had the backyard reinvented! The brick patio is no more, and now we have a much larger grass play area complete with the highly anticipated hill instead of stairs! We were so excited to finally see the hill all finished, and immediately started running up and down it, rolling on it, and attempting summersaults! Along with the new grass, we also have become a barefoot school and it is so fun to be out there running and crawling around barefoot!
We also got a new mud kitchen, which adds some more storage space in the area, and has given us extra inspiration! We have loved having more access to the dirt (which got filled in with fresh play soil), and the different bins and containers to use. All of our pots and pans have a place to live, and we are learning to organize and clean our work space after using it so that it is inviting to the next friends who may come to play.
But probably the most exciting part of the new backyard has been the new blocks! We immediately were drawn to them, exploring the different sizes and shapes, wondering why they had holes and bumps and how to connect them together. We turned the flat ones into surfboards and “surfed” down the new hill.
We moved on from there, starting to connect blocks together creating vehicles (trains, cars, and jetskis), We used the round pieces as tires or steering wheels. While the blocks do stack together, we were more interested at this stage in building 2-dimensionally mostly on the ground, not yet ready to think about more complex 3-D ideas.
We continued to explore and broaden our scope of ideas, and realized we could build much bigger and taller structures too, and it inspired even more group play. Originally we were individually focused, watching our friends build too, and maybe copying some of their ideas, but thinking on a smaller scale for ourselves. Now we were starting to build together, creating castles and houses, for us all to use together.
They even used the wheelbarrow to help carry blocks to the upper yard and build a “stage” in the back for them to have a charity-inspired concert. They used some of the blocks as instruments, making a drum set, keyboard, lots of guitars, rocks became their microphones, and they even had a security guard and stand!
It has been so fun for the teachers to watch the kids’ imaginations grow, and see how quickly their play has evolved. The goal with these new blocks was to help inspire more open-ended group and collaborative play. They have been used in so many different ways, and they will continue to constantly find new ideas and ways to include them. Their large size encourages them to ask friends for help and work on communication skills to explain what they might be trying to achieve, the knobs and holes help reinforce math and spatial awareness, and their open-endedness inspires critical thinking.