Enabling Environments: Collections - In the castle

Castles provide a wonderful gateway for imaginary play. Using the simplest of resources, children can create exciting new worlds full of knights, dragons, kings and queens. They make up stories for their new characters, practising essential narrative skills and descriptive language. Often there are strong links with home life, whether it is a favourite fairytale book or a popular film such as Disney's 'Tangled'. Providing a collection of resources for small-world play, such as castles and knights, and role play costumes and accessories, will support this form of fantasy play.

CORE COLLECTION

Resources that enable children to re-enact fantasy play scenarios should feature in your continuous (everyday) provision. By acting out narratives involving knights, witches or superheroes, young children are exploring important issues such as good and evil, life and death, what it means to be powerful and how to make people safe.

Helen Greensmith, early years foundation stage co-ordinator at James Peacock Nursery School in Ruddington, Nottingham, says that it's important to include castles, fairytale castles and small-world fantasy play figures like knights and dragons in your weekly provision even if you are not covering the castle topic, because there needs to be a 'balance between girland boy-led interests'.

She explains, 'We keep this in the core collection because some children have been on visits to castles or have knowledge of them from home. Doll's houses and other fantasy small worlds come out, so why not have a castle for the boys?'

The castle theme has recently come to the forefront with the new CBeebies series 'Mike the Knight', an animated fantasy adventure about a young medieval knight-in-training.

Ms Greensmith says, 'We plan for children's needs, looking at things that are current and interesting for them, but we continue to develop their historic awareness and knowledge on how life was different.'

She adds, 'If castles and knights were abstract for them, we wouldn't be planning for them.'

Here are some points to consider when building up a core collection:

• Provide a range of traditional wooden castles, plastic castles and fairytale castles that appeal to boys and girls.

• Offer a selection of small-world play figures in the form of knights, wizards and dragons, princesses, queens and kings, horses. Try the Fantasy World Wooden Characters (£35 for a set of 25) from www.yellow-door.net or the Schleich or Papo fantasy figurines, available from good retailers or at www.platform8.co.uk.

• Check that the small-world play figures are the correct size to fit into the castles.

• Ensure that the resources are age appropriate. Most two-year-olds, who are just beginning to engage in pretend play, need things that look like like the real thing. So, a castle that looks like a castle, like the Playmobil castle and knights sets, www.playmobil.co.uk, is ideal.

• Offer open-ended resources like Lego or blocks so that older children can create their own fantasy worlds. Try the Ghost Tower and Knights Castle by Haba (£54.74), available at www.treeblocks.co.uk.

• Provide dressing-up clothes to use inside and outside - not pre-designed, but big bits of material to become capes, princess robes or armour. For readymade chain-mail tunics, visor helmets and shields, try www.english-heritageshop.org.uk.

• Provide a selection of plastic building blocks or small cardboard boxes for children to build their own castles. Print off pictures of different castles from around the world for inspiration - for example, a traditional British castle or Indian palace.

• Offer a readily-usable area for children to make their own play props - for example, swords, shields, flags, crowns - from cardboard and recycled materials.

• Provide sand and water for children to create sandcastles and build moats.

SPECIAL COLLECTION

Nothing compares with the real experience of visiting a castle. But if there's none nearby, use storybooks and factual books about castles and knights to prompt children's play. Or, invest in a few key resources to create fantasy small worlds or role-play areas that will be guaranteed to inspire.

Castles Try the new folding Wooden Castle (£10), from www.yellow-door.net, with knights and dragon figures (£7.50), gold and silver treasure nuggets (£4 each for 500ml) and purple glitter sand (£5 for 1kg).

Large-scale play - Castle kits, made from durable cardboard, can be decorated to suit and can be dismantled for easy storage. Try the Calacastle, £30 (105 x 105 x 125) from www.kindtoys.co.uk.

Active role-play outdoors - Use pieces of fabric draped over trees or clothes horses or milk crates to create 'castles' and 'palaces'. Use foil or survival sheets to create silver walkways or red carpets and encourage children to dress up and role play.

A whole host of castle-based themes evolved after children at James Peacock Nursery School in Nottingham went on a school visit to the cinema to see the Disney film 'Tangled'. The children were so taken by the idea of castles, the ramparts and drawbridges that staff built an entire castle complete with dungeons and a fire-breathing dragon out of a £40 roll of corrugated cardboard.

Helen Greensmith explains, 'The children made paper-based knight helmets with visors out of cardboard strips and princess hats out of cones with pieces of crepe paper streaming down. We also made easy-to-put-on tunics out of different-coloured pillow cases.'

Extension activities

Here are more ways Peacock Nursery School extended their castle theme.

A royal banquet - The children were interested in the royal wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William, so staff decided to have a royal table where the children could come dressed in their princess and knight hats and costumes and eat a banquet of food provided by the parents.

Sports day - There was a Rapunzel race where the children ran back and forth with big blocks to build a tower. Horse shapes were attached to the fronts of the bikes and trikes and the children raced the horses as if they were the knights.

Secret messages - To promote writing skills, staff created a pulley system with a curtain ring attached to the roof with piece of ribbon and a basket on the end and wrote messages and sent them up to Rapunzel at the top of the tower of the cardboard castle.

Fantasy play - Staff introduced a huge dragon to the castle and the children built shields and swords to fight it in junk modelling sessions. They were also able to introduce shape work, colour patterns and simple repeating patterns through the work with shields.

BOOK CORNER

Castles by Colin Thompson (Red Fox): In this fantastical world there are castles in space, floating castles, castles in the sky and castles made of glass. Each one hides a royal family and there are all the usual mazes, puzzles, tricks and messages to be discovered.

Good Knight Sleep Tight by David Melling (Hodder Children's Books): The lovable and haphazard knight is back on another quest to find the finest feathers in the kingdom to fill the royal pillow and stop the little princess making that terrible noise.

In the Castle by Anna Milbourne (Usborne Picture Books): The adventures of a little boy who is whisked back in time as he plays in the ruins of a castle, only to find himself transported to the hustle and bustle of the building in its heyday, complete with jousts, banquets and valiant deeds.

BEST BUY - Ann Ross, Your Child Matters Childminding Service in Dartford, Kent

'We love Castle Building Blocks in a Box, £19.99, from www.mulberrybush.co.uk. The children of all ages play with them and there are limitless possibilities because you get a different castle every time you use it, indoors and out. A boy of three made very elaborate castles and acted out battles with knights, pirates and historical heroes. He's also built a castle that he said was Harry Potter's Hogwarts Castle, so it links to his own special interests.

'A girl of two years has used it with the knights, pirates, historical heroes and the Schleich elephant. I've recently bought some fairies to go with it, on her request, which has extended her play further, and she's been adding the doll's house furniture and silk scarves into her castle.

'The after-school children also play with it in a similar way, extending their props to include animals and some of the home corner toys. Their fantasy play is more elaborate, with talk of dungeons and links to history with kings and queens. We have even had the castle out in the garden, where the children have added straw, twigs, stones and bark to it. It's an excellent product which is totally versatile, easy-to-store, well-made and hardwearing.'

COLLECTIONS: ABOUT THIS SERIES

This series aims to help practitioners be more responsive to children's interests and reflect on how thoughtful resourcing can truly broaden and progress children's learning. It sets out what to include in a core collection for everyday use, and gives examples of how to build up resources that support children's interests and special play opportunities.