Children's television characters can be used as an excellent stimulus for meaningful learning experiences. The children's current interest in the television programme, 'Bob the Builder', is an ideal starting point for a mini topic on building a home. Many children will be familiar with the characters of Scoop, Muck, Dizzy and Lofty. You could use one of the many 'Bob the Builder' books or toys to generate discussion within the group, asking the children what each of the characters' function is - for example, Muck transports the soil, rubble and sand to and from the construction site.
Being able to allow the children to see a building under construction gives them the opportunity to observe and find out about features in their local environment. As real construction sites are dangerous places, this can be done by showing the children some video footage or looking at appropriate non-fiction books.
Clearing the site
* Place a mixture of compost and pebbles in the sand tray and cover with grass cuttings. Encourage the children to use toy machinery - diggers, bulldozers and lorries - to dig up and clear a site for building on.
Investigating bricks and mortar
* Provide the children with a variety of real bricks. Ask them to carefully hold and feel them. Encourage the children to think of words to describe them - heavy, hard, rough and so on.
* Invite a local builder in to talk to the children, showing them how bricks are stuck together and how walls are built. Ask the builder to talk about safety on the building site, and bring in a real hard hat and some tools. Urge the children to ask questions and listen carefully.
Building walls
* Make 'bricks' using empty cardboard packaging (empty dishwasher and washing machine tablet boxes are ideal for this purpose), either painted or covered with appropriately coloured paper. Get the children to build walls with them, using glue as mortar. Once dry, test out the walls to see how sturdy they are and look at which designs worked best.
* Playing with Lego bricks can be used as a way of testing patterns made by the bricks to see which pattern makes the structure stronger.
Tools of the trade
* Allow the children to play freely with a set of toy builder's tools that may include a hammer, screwdriver, saw, nails, pliers and spanners.
* Provide the children with opportunities to use real tools, ensuring that they are closely supervised. Let the children hammer nails into pieces of wood. A helpful safety tip is to train children to use a pair of pliers to hold the nail while they are hammering it.
Painting and decorating
* Provide rolls of inexpensive lining paper and allow children to use a range of different sized brushes to paint it.
* Using lining paper, allow the children to sponge-paint stencils on to the paper.
* Fill buckets of water and provide the children with large paint brushes and rollers to 'paint' outdoor walls using water.
Furnishing your home
* In small groups, give the children shoe boxes and invite them to furnish them with smaller boxes to make a bedroom, kitchen and living room. The children can make curtains from small pieces of material and wallpaper from small off-cuts of rolls of wallpaper.
* Let children look through catalogues and magazines to cut out and stick to sheets of paper items of furniture that they would like to have in their home. Encourage them to sort the items into different rooms - kitchen, living room and bedroom.
Selling the house
* Set up an estate agency in the home corner. Estate agents are always willing to give you unused property schedules and guides.
* Take the children on a walk around the local environment to take pictures of different types of houses. When the photos are developed, place them on a display board for prospective buyers to view. Make 'For sale' and 'Sold'
signs that the children can place on the photos.
Related websites
You may find the following websites helpful in developing the children's ICT skills.
* www.bobthebuilder.orgis the official 'Bob the Builder' website, where the children can do a range of tasks including interactive jigsaws and helping Bob to tidy his tool shed.
* At www.bbc.co.uk/littlekids,the children can print off images of 'Bob the Builder' to colour or use for other activities.