A Triple Decker Garage

The builders have been hammering away out the back of our preschool building a deck and the children have been very interested in the goings on, Jasper especially has taken an interest in the builders. He sits and watches them intently for extended periods of time. So rather than sitting and watching I asked if he would like to do some real building of his own - with real bricks! He liked this idea and we headed to the sandpit.

  

We started with a single room that consisted of three walls and a roof. Jasper decided it was a garage. I asked if we could make another garage on top of the first story and he said: "Lets make a triple decker one" Soon we had lots of apprentice concreters mixing up the best batch of concrete they could. It had to be just the right consistency to hold the walls up on the second story. Summer, Matilda, Tamryn and Peyton were the pioneer concrete mixers who decided that sloppy was the best!



Our next challenge was smoothing out the concrete on the bricks, the shovels are not quite flat enough for this process and we ended up with big mounds of cement. I was sent on a mission to find the trowels and quickly gave them to our concreters.



Tamryn was very proud of her sloppy concrete mix and worked tirelessly at mixing the cement round and round, she defended the consistency to Jasper who said its no good if it isn't sloppy: Tamryn replied very confidently "It is sloppy, VERY sloppy"





Soon the building site was alive with busy workers, Amy, Lilly and Samantha Lee joined in adding lots of concrete ready for the third story.



Jasper noticed how busy everyone was with the concreting so decided he would be the brick guy, Asher came over and asked: "Are you guys making concrete?" Jasper was getting the bricks and said: "I'm the brick guy" Asher followed Jasper and said "I want to be the brick guy" The brick guys finished off the third story and said: "There a triple decker garage"



Here we can see the finished product and the beginnings of a new level! The children wanted to keep going and they left their structure in the sandpit to add to later. Using real materials with children gives them a sense of importance and purpose. The use of real bricks was the main motivation fro Jasper and directly supported his interest in the builders. The children extended this experience themselves and created goals within their play - to get the concrete to the right consistency!