Construction: Learning Experiences
Our construction-themed science activities provide hands-on opportunities to explore scientific concepts while engaging in imaginative play. Children can build simple structures using blocks or recycled materials to experiment with balance, stability, and engineering principles.
Preschoolers can also explore concepts like gravity and motion by constructing ramps or inclined planes for construction trucks to roll down. Additionally, educators can introduce the concept of simple machines, such as levers and pulleys, by incorporating them into construction-themed play scenarios.
Preschoolers can also explore concepts like gravity and motion by constructing ramps or inclined planes for construction trucks to roll down. Additionally, educators can introduce the concept of simple machines, such as levers and pulleys, by incorporating them into construction-themed play scenarios.
Sample Construction Activities + Resources
Themed Activities
- Block Play: Provide a variety of blocks for free play to encourage creativity.
- Building Projects: Simple projects like constructing a house, a bridge, or a tower using blocks or recycled materials.
- Pretend Play: Set up a construction site with props like hard hats, vests, and toy tools.
- Sensory Play: Add dirt, rocks, sand and construction trucks to your sensory bin. Add ramps, rocks and natural elements.
- Movement + Fitness: Learning to recognize when your body needs to move for better focus is a critical life skill. Noticing when your preschooler needs a mental break and requires gross motor movement provides an opportunity to help them recognize that they need to speak up and share what they need. Help little ones advocate for themselves with these construction movement cards. Spin like a cement mixer, stretch like a crane, and dip like a dump truck!
- Arts + Crafts: Try drawing your own blueprint for a dream house or a cool building.
More Activities
- Construction Art – By cutting shapes out of construction paper, invite your preschooler to construct a building of their choice. Will they create a skyscraper or a school? A house or a fire station? What shapes do they need to create their construction masterpiece?
- Pipe Cleaner Building – Using pipe cleaners, encourage your preschooler to build a structure or make a design, shapes, letters, numbers, etc. Allow this activity to be open-ended and a time for exploration. This is one of my favorite ways to introduce a construction theme to my preschoolers–with a simple invitation to play!
- Touch and Feel Box – Grab various items with different textures (wood, bricks, tile, sand, nuts/bolts,etc) from the hardware store and place them in an empty tissue box or paper bag. Invite your preschooler to put their hand in the box/bag and try to identify what the item is just by touch.
- Color Walk – Gather sheets of construction paper and tape them down in a path all through the house. Can he/she walk from one room to the next by stepping only on certain colors? When we work on a construction site, there are clear places to walk so we can stay safe around all that heavy equipment.
- Construction Counting – Gather all the construction trucks and make some number cards with the numbers 1-10. Using rocks, scoops of sand or dirt, or even dried pasta or cereal, invite your preschooler to scoop up a certain number of items and return them to the construction site. Double the counting fun by using playdough for rocks. First you have to count the playdough rocks as you make them, and count them again as you dump them.
- Stop Sign Design – Using a piece of white paper, draw an octagon to make a stop sign. Invite your preschooler to cut along the 8 lines and glue red torn paper to the stop sign (this adds a fine motor element). Try this with various traffic and construction signs. What other shapes do you see on the road? Feel free to take a drive and gather ideas!
- Construction Tower Build STEM– Grab any building blocks (Lego, Duplo, MegaBloks) and invite your preschooler to build a city or neighborhood. What plans will they make before building? Can you draw them out on a piece of paper the same way a draftsman would draw up plans? Use painter’s or electrical tape to make roads on the floor, too.
Managing (Construction) Problems – Go to YouTube and listen to the story My Truck is Stuck by Kevin Lewis. The man with the truck encounters a big problem: his truck is stuck and it won’t move one inch more! Fortunately, he finds lots of big helpers to help tow his truck, but it’s still stuck! Discuss with your preschooler how all those vehicles chose to stop and help instead of driving on by. Ask your preschooler, “How could you help someone at school, at the library, in the store, if they needed help? What can a preschooler do to help someone?”