Brick by brick

Children could watch a building site for hours. They are fascinated by all the machinery and equipment, from the mechanical diggers to the road breakers to the uniforms that builders wear.

The building site can appeal to both boys and girls, so be sure to provide pictures of women as builders or in related roles such as architects and surveyors (see the Nursery World poster).

To kick off the project:

* Organise a trip to visit a nearby building site.

* Invite a parent or carer who is a builder, carpenter, plumber or DIY enthusiast to talk with the children about their work and to describe the function of the contents of a tool box.

* Cordon off a large space outdoors that the children can develop as a building site. Make sure that it is big enough for large-scale investigative play with ramps, planks, bricks and wheelbarrows. These materials provide opportunities for children to investigate rolling, sliding and gradient. The children will also need space to build large-scale structures and to use wheelbarrows to transport materials.

Adult-led activity

On the wall

Make a brick wall.

Key learning intentions

To use mathematical words to describe shapes and talk about patterns

To examine objects to find out more about them

To ask questions about why things happen and how things work

Adult:child ratio 1:up to 6

Resources

Protective clothing including hard hats, goggles, overalls, thick gloves, reflective strips, tools, tool belts, tool aprons, tool carrying bags and boxes measuring instruments including long tape rule wheelbarrows trundle wheel collections of bricks (wooden, large plastic, some real bricks) a bag of cement trowels a large spirit levelActivity content

* Discuss building and the children's experiences of building sites. Talk about foundations, scaffolding, and building materials such as bricks, tiles and wood.

* Make a collection of house bricks for the children to examine closely.

Measure the bricks, identify their two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes and talk about edges and corners.

* Discuss building a brick wall. Look at the patterns of bricks in a nearby brick wall, talk about how it is built and what holds the bricks together.

* Make up some real mortar using sand, cement and water, or substitute very damp sand as mortar. Use real bricks and trowels to make a low brick wall.

Discuss how to put the mortar on the bricks and show how to use the spirit level.

Extending learning

Key vocabulary

Trowel, mortar, bricks, long, short, face, stretcher, dig, spirit level, measure, straight, level

Questions to ask

* I wonder how we can find out how long the wall is?

* What do you think would happen if we didn't build the wall straight?

* What's the best way to put mortar on a brick?

* Can you find anything else as heavy as a brick?

* Do you think teddy could see over the top of the wall or not?

* If you stretched your arms really wide, do you think you would be able to touch both ends of the wall at the same time?

Extension ideas

* Experiment with colour mixing to create a collection of bricks of different colours. Use various materials together, such as chalk and paint, and sprinkle salt on wet paint to represent the roughness of brick.

* Make a block and tackle bucket conveyor by attaching a small pulley to the top of two posts or climbing frame and threading a plastic bucket on to the line. Have the children send buckets of plastic bricks to the top of the climbing frame or across the 'building site'.

* Collect samples of building materials such as types of bricks, tiles, wood and pipes. Provide magnifying glasses for the children to look closely at the different textures of the materials.

* Identify in books the machines and tools used to construct buildings.

Talk about how to use the equipment safely and emphasise the need to use goggles, thick gloves, hard hats and heavy boots.

* Sort building tools and machines into noisy and quiet categories.

* Record, with the children, sounds from a building site.

* Visit and take photographs of the tallest, oldest, newest and favourite buildings in your area. Compare them with other buildings around the world.

How do the shapes and building materials differ?

Child-initiated learning

Additional resources

Wooden and plastic building bricks that do not interlock a portable demolition crane made from a sock ball tied to a piece of string attached to a cup hook inserted into a broom handle (To operate it, one child holds the broom and the other swings the ball.)

Possible learning experiences

* Understanding that buildings are often demolished.

* Developing an awareness of recycling.

* Working co-operatively.

The practitioner role

* Explain that buildings are often demolished and some of the materials are re-used to build new structures.

* Encourage the children to develop their own construction skills by building walls and demolishing them with the crane and then rebuilding them to a different design.

Adult-led activity

Guess work

Play an identification game.

Key learning intentions

To describe simple features of objects

To extend vocabulary and use new words to describe experiences

Adult:child ratio 1:up to 4

Resources

A variety of tools such as a hammer, pliers and screwdriver screws nuts and bolts

Activity content

* Provide a feely bag and a selection of tools to identify. Put one item at a time in the bag and ask the children to feel the outside of the bag and decide what tool is inside. Encourage the children to describe what they can feel and not just name the tool.

* Provide extras clues by photocopying each tool and showing the children the outline of them.

Key vocabulary

Screwdriver, hammer, pliers, handle, heavy, light, long, thin, moves, round, smooth, rough

Questions to ask

* Do you think the tool in the bag is heavy?

* I wonder what you would use that tool for?

* Does any part of the tool move?

* Can you feel a handle?

* How would you describe the surface of the tool? Does it feel rough or smooth?

* How did you know it was the hammer?

Extension activities

* Set up the writing area as construction site office, with computer, clock, telephone, message pad and board, health and safety posters, chairs and table for meetings, calendar, calculator, clipboards, pencil and paper to sketch designs.

* Encourage the children to design a tool identification poster that shows what the tool looks like and what it is used for. Type the names and draw the tools on the office computer.

* Draw up a health and safety code for working on the building site. Write safety notices together. Draw posters showing why hard hats, steel toecaps and heavy gloves must be worn.

* Draw plans and use small construction material to build scale models of buildings, bridges, towers and flyovers. Display the plans in the site office.

* Make skeletal structures of bridges and towers using construction and drinking straws, pipe cleaners and paper strips. Suspend the constructions from the ceiling.

* Introduce a construction set that the children have not used before and ask the children to make demonstration buildings to show clients when they visit the site office.

* Put building problems on a notice board, such as "How do you build a tall tower?" and "How can you stop a tower falling down?" Encourage the children to provide solutions - or more problems.

Child-initiated learning

Construction area

Additional resources

Resources to enable children to explore joining two pieces of wood:

offcuts of wood, hammers, pliers, small nails and screws, and screwdrivers.

Possible learning experiences

* Developing hand and eye co-ordination when hammering nails.

* Learning how to hammer and to remove nails safely.

The practitioner role

* Demonstrate how to hammer a nail in safely and how to remove a nail from a piece of wood using pliers.

* Demonstrate how to use a screwdriver to turn screws into soft wood and how to rotate the screws with a screwdriver to remove them.

* Support children in a organising a display of their joined work.

* Discuss safety issues and the wearing of goggles.

Adult-led activity

Production line

Support the children in making 'hard hats' to use in dramatic play.

Key learning intentions

To extend ideas involving different media that involve overlapping and fitting

Show high levels of involvement and persist for an extended period of time

Adult:child ratio 1:up to 4

Resources

A hard hat newspaper a bucket containing diluted PVA glue balloons and balloon pumps paints polythene DIY gloves empty jam jars

Activity content

* Show the children a real hard hat. Reinforce the idea that they are making hats only for pretend purposes.

* Discuss how many family members or other people they know wear hard hats at work or home.

* Show the children how to tear the newspaper into strips and soak the strips in the bucket of glue.

* Blow up the balloons using the balloon pumps and tie the necks.

* Balance the balloons on the jam jars and cover the balloon with the paper strips. Continue adding layers of newspaper until the balloon is covered.

Leave in a warm place to dry and when dry pop the balloons with a pin.

* Use scissors to cut the hard hats to fit and decorate with paint.

Extension ideas

* Discuss with the children why builders wear hard hats. Talk about other jobs where you have to wear a hard hat. such as window cleaning.

* Ask the children whether they wear any protective clothing and show them a fluorescent vest for bike riding, goggles, sun hats and anoraks.

* Encourage the children to wear their hats and act out a scenario where they are wearing a hard hat for a purpose.

* Encourage the children to customise their hats when they paint them, and have a hard hat parade.

* Extend children's dramatic play by putting sand and small-world transporters on a groundsheet on the floor. Children can then wear their hard hats to transport and tip sand to an agreed place.

Sheila Ebbutt is managing director and Carole Skinner is project development manager at BEAM Education (tel: 020 7684 3323)

Books

* Building Site by F Brooks and Jo Litchfield (Usborne Publishing, board book, 2.99)

* Little Windows - On The Building Site (Dorling Kindersley, 4.99)

* The Building Site by Philippe Dupasquier (Walker Books, 4.99)

* Tweenies: bakers, builders and busy people (BBC Consumer Publishing, Pounds 3.50)

Project guide

This project recognises that:

* settings should be constantly resourced and organised in such a way as to offer learning opportunities across all areas of the Foundation Stage curriculum

* topics can enhance basic provision and respond to children's interests

* children need plenty of first-hand experiences and time to develop ideas, skills and concepts through play

* the practitioner has a vital role in supporting children's learning.

This project, therefore, suggests:

* adult-led activities for introducing the theme

* resources that enhance basic provision and facilitate learning through child-initiated play

* how the practitioner can support children's learning.

When using the project, practitioners should recognise that:

* activities should be offered and never imposed on children

* children's experiences, and learning, may differ from those anticipated

* the learning, planned or unplanned, that takes place is valid

* the process is very valuable and should not be undermined by an inappropriate emphasis on outcomes or concrete end results.