Construction Play Outdoors – Using Garden Cuttings!
My 4 year old son Doodles is absolutely obsessed with all things building and construction related. I f he’s quiet then I know not to worry as he is probably playing with Lego or bricks or pieces of recycled rubbish and building some sort of a contraption!!!! I even had to ask his preschool teacher to discourage him from playing in the construction corner at school all the day everyday and encourage to him to do other activities!
Construction Play Obsessed – Lego, Blocks, Cubes, Tent Building – you name it Doodles loves it! (and so does his little sister!)
We have been cutting back all of our hedges and trees and shrubs over the past few weeks – we have a huge garden so this has been a massive job (now finished thank God!). Anyway, as a result of all this work there has been a tonne of garden debris stacked up in a pile waiting to be shredded. Doodles has been keeping an eye on this with great curiosity, I could almost see the cogs turning as he planned in his mind what he could use all the branches for.
Yesterday afternoon, as soon as he got home from preschool, he set to work! He hauled as many of the big branches as he could into the middle of our front lawn and began to build his fort. He worked away until he was happy with his circular fort. He then happily played in his fort for most of the afternoon. He just amazes me everyday with his building ideas. He will use absolutely anything he can find to build. There is always another use for all of our rubbish, be it garden cuttings, toilet rolls, boxes, etc. Why not let your little engineers lose with these materials and see what they will create.
Ciara x
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The Finished Product – Fort Doodles!
Our Little House in the Country 
Great idea and lovely imagination-my son is transport obsessed so he would probably try to build a road with those cuttings somehow!
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Wow,he’s quite the little engineer!Lovely photos!
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Thanks Aedin.
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Creative, fun, imaginative!
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Thank you, he’s a creative little man!
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How creative! Reminds me of when I was a kid. I used to love going outside and making teepees from sticks, a blanket, and use pine needles as bedding. 🙂
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I adore this and only wish we had a big enough garden to do something similar. Outdoor fun just can’t be beaten!
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A young architect! I love his creations and he designs are magnificent. =) #countrykids
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Thank you so much! 🙂
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Great job, Doodles! Great, big garden, too! Mel #CountryKids
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Thanks Mel, have a lovely weekend!
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This is brilliant… I love creative he has been with something so simple.
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Fantastic! What a great imagination and a lot of fun.
Thanks for linking #LetKidsBeKids
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Great idea! Mine were trying to build wigwams with ours! #letkidsbekids
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I actually thought that he would build a wigwam, that’s what came to my mind first but, no, he had other plans – and he won’t let us clear it away or shred the branches yet!!!!!! Thanks for visiting!
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I hope he clears them all into the garden waste bin afterwards! Looks like he had great fun, it’s a very imaginative use for the branches. #letkidsbekids
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The fort is still in situ! Still trying to convince him that we need to clear them!!!! Thanks for stopping by!
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Just what kids should be doing, applying what they learn inside to the world outside. It looks like a great fort and hours of happy play. I bet he slept well after all that lugging branches around. Thank you for sharing such imagination on country Kids.
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Thank you so much, the fort is still standing, our next battle will be to persuade him that it is time to dismantle so that it all can be shredded – meanwhile we still have a wonderful fort in out front garden!
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Thats a fantastic fort, don’t feel you need to discourge his construction obsession, he is going through something called a ‘schema’ where they repeat actions of play over and over to understand concepts and the way things work, his is construction at the mo. All children do it and it is their way of learning and understanding, things like emptying and filling, climbing/building are examples of schemas. my two are into emptying/measuring and filling at the mo,
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Thanks for that, I am very familiar with schema in terms of drawing and writing development but never occurred to me that it obviously applies to all areas, thanks, we fully encourage him in this at home, it’s just at school that we would prefer to see him widen his horizons. He just loves to build- yesterday he created all sorts of vehicles using play dough and lose parts. Thanks so much for stopping by 🙂
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This is fabulous Ciara. I’m featuring it on Tuesday Tots this week. Thanks for linking up.
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Thank you so much! That’s really lovely to hear! I love Tuesday Tots! 🙂
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