Learn with Play at Home: Construction Building with Blocks and Tape

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See below for your chance to win a complete set of Spielgaben

Today's activity is part of an ongoing series, Exploring Reggio. Our co-creators for the series are, The Imagination Tree, An Everyday Story, One Perfect Day, Twodaloo and Racheous- Lovable Learning.

If there's one material that seems to be popular with children, it's sticky tape. My daughter, Maddie (aged 4) has gotten to the stage where she is able to manipulate sticky-tape to its advantage and therefore loves using it as often as possible. She is also big on constructions at the moment and loves taking recycled goods and turning them into something new.

For something a little different, I thought that I would combine the wonder that is sticky-tape with a variety of different blocks and shapes. This would allow her to take her general building with these materials to a whole new level, without that pesky gravity getting in the way!

Materials: Various shapes and sizes of blocks and manipulatives. (We're using some of our Spielgaben here. See below for your chance to win a complete set!) and sticky tape (we used some fluro paper tape).

Manipulating sticky-tape and even adhering one piece of something to another (especially if it has more weight behind it than a piece of paper) can be more difficult than you think. There was so much hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills needed and I found her level of concentration to be very good.

As she could make items stand up that she never could before, she started creating things that she'd not tried before, starting with some people.

Having a variety of straight and curved edges encouraged her to investigate how these pieces fitted together, (if they even did) and test a variety of sizes, shapes and combinations. She wasn't thinking about learning about things like diameter and circumference but I could see the beginnings of understanding throughout her play and investigations.

The tape was used for both decoration and construction.

She was determined to make this thin rod stand vertically and worked on this for a very long time.

It took a couple of rods but she eventually did it!

I set up this invitation to play on a solid surface (a table top) and set it on top of our Ottoman to give a large flat space to work on at a good level for sitting on the floor. She was busy constructing for more than 2 hours.

Making this construction stand took a small amount of assistance by me. When she came to me saying that she could not make it stand, I had her look at the level that each of the rods would be sitting on and we compared this to things around our house like chairs and tables and how they stood up. Eventually having success brought her great joy.

She ended up with a whole playground set up, complete with people, seats, play equipment and more. This is an experience we will definitely be repeating, as adding in the tape gave a whole new world of scope and possibility for our constructions with blocks.

Join us in a fortnight for another Exploring Reggio post and don't forget to check out all the other great activities from our co-hosts.

If you missed our previous Exploring Reggio posts you can catch up on them here:
Exploring and Printing with Paint on a Mirror
Enticing Literacy. Making and Writing Words
Painting Big (you've got to have a go of this!)
Exploring Teen Numbers

Your chance to win a complete set of Spielgaben *This competition has now closed

We've heard how much you guys love the materials and now, thanks to the generosity of our wonderful blog sponsor, Spielgaben, we have one complete set of Spielgaben to giveaway to one of our lucky readers.

You can read what I have to say about the Spielgaben play set here and why I think there are some educational toys that are worth the money! Spielgaben definitely falls into this category. We just love our set and use parts of it almost every single day.
You can see how we used our set to learn about letters and sight words and also how we used it to help learn teen-numbers.

To Enter: Congratulations to our Winner, Lindsey Yocum

Leave a comment on this blog post answering the question, How would your family enjoy using Spielgaben?

Conditions of Entry/Giveaway Details:

- Competition runs from Monday 9th Dec until 8pm Monday 16th December. (EMT + 11. Melbourne, Australia Time)
- Open to Australian, US and UK residents aged 14+
- Prize includes 1 full set of Spielgaben and postage to Aust. US or UK.
- The most creative comment will be selected. Chance will not play a part in determining the winner. The judges decision is final.

- If your profile does not display your contact details, please leave your email address with the comment. You can't win if we can't contact you!
Edit: We had such amazing responses to this which made it very hard to judge. Obviously there are so many deserving people and I wish I had 146 sets to giveaway. The final decision was made by myself and the team at Spielgaben. Thank you all for your entries.

Bonus discount code

Pssst! For a limited time, if you pre-order your set of Spielgaben, Learn with Play at Home readers can enter the special discount code: " LWPH-2013 " for a saving of $45 AUD. This code is valid until 5th Jan, 2014.

Happy playing,

Debs :)

{Disclosure: I have provided the link to the Spielgaben site for your convenience as part of a paid ambassadorship with Spielgaben. All opinions in this article, as always are my own}

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