Hard hat alert: Create your own construction site!
Hover over each Learning Benefit below for a detailed explanation.
What you need:
- toy construction vehicles, including diggers, dump trucks, tractors, and cranes
- plastic people
- dramatic play items such as hard hats, safety signs, and tape measures
What to do:
- Use books, photographs, and toys to introduce the different types of construction vehicles and machines needed to make a building. Digger, by Nicola DesChamps; B is for Bulldozer: A Construction ABC, by June Sobel; Building A House, by Byron Barton; and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, by Virginia Lee Burton, are good starts.
- Discuss the different kind of jobs needed to construct a building: structural engineers, electricians, plumbers, brick workers, carpenters, welders, and heavy machine operators.
- With your child, create a building plan. She can draw her idea first.
- Lay out the materials, and invite your child to get to work on his building. Give him ample time to develop his ideas and play (don't be afraid to leave the "construction site" set up in a corner for several days). Photograph the completed buildings.