This week we have been playing with a rather fantastic construction site that William very cutely calls an ‘instruction’ site.

We have created a messy construction site before but we wanted to do it again as we have some rather fabulous new wooden vehicles from DKL Toys Wonderworld.

Esther and William have a front loader each and a dumper truck each. A large truck and a small crane to share.

These fabulous wooden vehicles are affectionately known in our house as ‘The Pack’ a name shamelessly stolen from Thomas. We also have Cranky the Crane working on the site.

The site is made in our Tuff Spot and we also used the mega ramp this time as an exciting way for vehicles and materials to access the site.

We marked out the site with cones and William donned his hard hat and safety jacket.

The materials we chose for the site were shreddies, oats, rice and cannelloni rolls as large drains. There is a building site opposite Esther and William’s preschool and we have sat and watched the drainage being moved by the trucks and cranes. Esther and William had great fun recreating the jobs we had seen the site crew carry out near their school.

I love the way that play like this encourages children to use language that they would not ordinarily have chance to use. Esther and William were stacking, scooping, digging, loading, scraping, transporting, constructing. They were giving each other instructions and directions, they described and narrated what they were doing and they asked questions. Lots of questions! Which is great, it is how children learn. Why are we doing this, how does this work, can I add this, can we try this, can you please do this? Questions, questions, questions!

Esther and William love messy play. I think that they find it therapeutic. It also encourages them to play differently, it provides problems to solve that means they can be creative in their thinking and their play. William loves testing things and spends lots of time testing things to see whether they are magnetic or not, using Cranky the Crane. Esther is more of a storyteller, a creator of characters. Their different styles complement each other beautifully as they play.

As the day moves on more and more toys enter the world of our messy play. Engines are usually the first to appear often followed by cars, fairies, pirates and dinosaurs. The mega ramp added a new element of play, an extra level to their storytelling. By the end of the day the construction site had morphed into this mish mash of play!

This morning while Esther and William were at school I changed the play from construction site to dinosaur park and this will be used tomorrow to explore flooding as the mega ramp becomes a waterfall and the dino park floods. I cannot wait to see how they interpret the play.

This post is the start of this week’s Messy Play for Matilda Mae, I hope you will link up and join us.