Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

We like to have a lot of imaginative play set ups on the go at one time at kinder.

Earlier this year we made a little family of bead people using our trusty old hot glue gun and a permanent black marker and they turned out really well.

Most importantly the children have been having a great time playing with them.

Here we teamed them with some other small wooden dolls, a miniature china tea set, some stick fences we also made as well as other natural materials and the cutest little artificial plants.

Simple, inexpensive and totally irresistible!!

This little tree house was one of those projects that just kind of happen!  Catherine from Gingham Cherry noticed it in a recent post and was interested to know what it was so we thought we’d share it with everybody.

It came about after Donna found some interestingly shaped logs in a wood pile, and to her they simply screamed … tree house!

With a saw she found in the shed, Donna took the logs and jammed them into a vice, sawed off the ends to make them even, cut another log into slabs for the top levels, sliced up a thickish branch to make the steps and then attached it all together … with the hot glue gun of course!

The children love the tree house and play with it all the time. It is constantly used in all sorts of imaginative play settings along with …

pebbles, sand, tanbark …

mud and water  …

and has survived two pre-kinder and two kinder groups for over two year now!…We love our trusty glue gun!

No pattern, no rules, no cost, just wood, a saw and a hot glue gun.

We like to be creative and make our own props when ever we can like these little felt owls perched in the tree house, just making things up as we go along!

We made little fences to be used by the children in imaginative play. We picked up the pop sticks from Reverse Art Truck and using our trusty hot glue gun, put them together.

The beauty of a hot glue gun is, the glue dries almost instantly.

In order to create strength we ran a pop sick either side of the pickets.

To add interest we positioned the pickets at different heights and angles.

By leaving the pickets longer at the bottom they will stand up easier in sand, tanbark, playdough, etc.,