FORT Building 101
Fort building is FUN—obviously, but also:
1. Building forts channels and develops your child’s inner engineer. I have to support that! Fort building requires problem-solving, divergent and creative thinking–all skills needed in engineering!
2. Fort building will consume your child’s interest and focus for long periods of time!
- Time needed for decision-making and planning—making use of rudimentary architectural skills;
- Time for actual construction—employing geometric and engineering applications as well as using substantial amounts of physical energy; and finally,
- Time for imaginations to run wild as their ‘fort’ is utilized—requiring creativity and language development and, collaboration, if more than one child is playing.
3. Building forts, as noted in #2, consumes a lot of physical energy. Regular physical play is important for the health and well-being of young children.
4. Sometimes fort building requires more than 2 hands. When that’s the case, cooperation is a must! Builders need to work together for their fort to come together and stay together long enough to play! It is a perfect activity to develop social skills.
5. Building forts builds self-esteem—whenever a kidlet sets out to do something, puts effort into it…struggles, maybe even has some failures of design and/or construction—but finally reaches the end, accomplished a goal–they’ve also built up a substantial amount of self-esteem. They learn mistakes, even failures aren’t the end-all….that their persistence and dedication can make a difference!
Your kidlet can make forts using store-bought kits like Crazy Forts or Fort Boards. Forts can also be created with homemade items! Watch this video from an expert (“Sheets are most best to use…” Hard to argue with that!)
Yours in Play!
Teacher Karen
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