The children organically play with ramps in our block area. We also have tunnels. I decided this week to set up some provocations to help them explore that a little more.
We already have these nice cubes from a hosiery company that the children enjoy. Mostly they have used them for pancake robot arms this week I’m going to challenge them to use them differently.
The questions I ask myself as children play are… What is it about ramps and tunnels that children seem the most curious about? What are learning goals for individual children and for the group as a whole? How can we extend children’s thinking and learning during Tunnel play?
Before we played I ask the children things like “what do you notice? What are some ways you might play here? What are some things we can do to keep each other safe here? I wonder – how could you get this marble to move along this path without pushing it with your finger?”
Did you know that this first conversation introduces children to the idea of an engineering mindset: planning, building, testing, and refining, we will continue to focus on these skills throughout our investigation of tunnels and ramps.