CONSTRUCTION & COMMUNITY WORKERS
Imaginative: Community Workers, vehicles, Cardboard city
Ideas: Draw a city on a large piece of paper, cardboard
box, use painter’s tape to tape a road, paper towel
tubes for parking garage, make signs to say what
the building is. Follow your child’s lead. When the
idea comes from the child, they typically stick to
the activity longer with some help from the adults.
Maybe you prefer to draw a countryside, a farm,
A zoo, a jungle, a beach
Extend: Who would work in this building (hospital), garage,
mall, restaurant, post office, construction site
What tools might they use?
Who else might you find?
Art: Creating with shapes, sticks, glue, scissors
colored paper, stickers
Ideas: Talk about the material used, how will you put it
together?
“Tell me about…your picture, the colors you chose,
your creation”
Tell me about… is more open ended than “what is that?”
Your child can tell you more about their creation, it does not need to be a specific anything. They are learning through doing
This is about process not product
Sensory: Pour in a bag of rice into a container (plastic
container, cake pan, shoe box) add some
construction vehicles, tubes (from paper towel
or foil wrap, sticks, rocks and/or a few pine cones
Ideas: Follow your child’s lead. How will they choose to
play in it? Hide and Seek an item and find it.
Extend: What could you use at home to make a sensory bin?
If you could build a road to anywhere in the world,
where would that be?
Awareness of Self: Mystery Bag of community worker
tools
Ideas: Put your hand in the bag without peeking, feel an item
and try to name them or say how you use them.
Encourage your child to describe the item-is it soft
bumpy, rough, smooth, squishy, wooden, fuzzy?
Extend: How did you know it was a ….?, What would you use
the tools for? Can you name some other tools?
Gross Motor: Ladder Fun made with sticks on the driveway
or tape or sting on the floor
Ideas: Think of different ways to walk, hop, stomp on,
between, in front of, beside, outside rails
jump over the lines
Extend: How far can you stretch touching one rung
with your hands, the other with your feet?
Ladder fun
Hop on each rung
Hop between each rung
Walk on sides of ladder
Walk sideways between the rungs
Cognitive: Which item does not belong?
Ideas: Take contents out of bag, talk about which one
does not belong with others and why
(carrot, broccoli, tomato and bike –the bike because
it’s not a vegetable)
Extend: What else would belong with….?
Imaginative: Construction Play-take out some child friendly
tools, some hats, safety goggles (old pair of
sunglasses with lenses removed), ribbon for Caution
Tape, old phone or walkie talkie, clipboard and paper.
Ideas: Encourage children to use their imagination.
How could you pretend to be a ……?, what would you
use to build a….?
Extend: What materials would you need for a …..?, what if
you didn’t have any….?
Art: Paint—stamps, brick (sponge), paint brush, truck track
be creative with the materials available.
Ideas: What else could you use to make prints?
Talk about the material used, how will you put it
together?
This is about process not product
“Tell me about…your picture, the colors you chose,
Your creation”
Fine Motor: Clay brick (or playdough), golf tees, hammer
Ideas: Hammer in the “nails” (golf tees) to the clay.
Can you make different size bricks?
Extend: How can you remove the “nails”? What other
Materials would you use a hammer and nails with?
Sensory: Playdough mud with tools, community workers and
tubes, vehicles
Ideas: Explore how the vehicles move thru the mud. Talk
about people you have seen at construction sites.
Extend: What else can this be used for? How could you
make a sensory bin at home?
Muddy Play-Dough
2 Cups of Flour
1/2 Cup of Coffee Grounds (or cocoa powder)
1 Tablespoon of Instant Coffee (This will make the colour darker- Dissolve in hot water)
1 Cup of Salt
2 Teaspoons of Cream of Tartar (she called for more, but this stuff is hard to find, so I cut the amount by a third).
1 Cup of very hot water
2 Tablespoons of oil
A few drops of Glycerin (or a piece of a soap bar, shaved)
Mix the dry ingredients. Add the wet, stir lots. Let it sit for a while to thicken, then stir again. If needed, add more flour to thicken to the right texture.
Store in an air tight container in fridge
Gross Motor: Soccer
Playing inside-for a “net” use a box, basket,
paper shopping bag as the net, any soft ball or
rolled up socks
Ideas: Kick the ball in the box. Use the inside of your foot,
the outside of your foot, your toe. Start off close
to the “net” then gradually move farther away.
Extend: Basketball-use box, basket or paper bag. Toss the
ball in the box. Use your left hand, right
hand, two hands, throw underhand, throw overhand
How else could you play this?
What other ideas do you have
