Build-a-Wall

Combining rocks and play doh made for a lovely little invitation to build-a-wall for my son. Great for fine motor skills and introducing the concept of engineering to avoid collapse.

Invitation to build-a-wall.

What you need:

- tipper truck

- play doh (I used white, yellow and black)

- rocks (I used flat mini slabs so that they were a little easier for my son to stack)

- knife for cutting the play doh

The set up.

How it works:

This was nice and quick to set up and entertained my son for a good half hour. At first he enjoyed just spending time cutting up the play doh using a knife.

Working on his cutting skills.

Once the initial cutting excitement had gone he started to build his wall. He squished the play doh pieces that he had cut into small round blobs and layered them in-between the rocks.

Selecting his rocks.

Adding to the wall.

He soon discovered that he needed to think carefully about how he constructed the wall. At first he just chose the rocks at random but that meant he had big heavy rocks at the top and his wall toppled over. He soon realised that he needed the bigger rocks at the bottom and the smaller rocks at the top.

Adding some pressure to stabilise the wall.

Carefully ordering the size of the rocks.

Nearly done.

Once he had built his wall he enjoyed carefully manoeuvring his tipper truck around it and of course he couldn't resist knocking it down! He loaded the truck back up with the materials and parked it up ready for future play.