This is one of our favourite activities using Six Bricks!
Whether you use this activity at school or at home with family and friends, it’s an incredibly powerful way of encouraging children to take risks and not give up when the challenge becomes too tough for them.
It’s a great way of encouraging them to be resilient and continue to problem solve until they identify a workable solution. They also have to work as a team to identify what the best solution would be.
What’s more they also gain fine motor skills so that they develop the strength in their fingers and hands.
Have a look at the video and see how easy the activity is and how you could use it easily in your home play area or in a school setting. You could do it as a solo activity or get the whole family involved.
Timing: About 10-15 minutes.
Number of children: 2+
Ages: 3-6 years.
Resources: One set of six bricks per child. If you have the Ultimate Kit, you will have even more bricks at your disposal so that the tower can go even higher.
Instructions:
Ask the children to construct a tower by stacking the bricks short end to short end. In other words, the bricks will be stacked vertically.
They can do it with one hand or if you have pegs, they could use these to place one brick on top of the other.
If there are more children, they can pair up or form small groups and compete: who can construct the tallest tower without it falling over?
You can put some pressure on the teams by setting a time limit so that they need to think on their feet to determine how high they can go without the tower falling down.
You can also scale it up by using blindfolds or the non-dominant hand to build.
Watch this video of the activity in action:
Have fun using the Six Bricks method! And of course, your Yay4Play educational activity kit!