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Hammering!

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This week we’ve been busy practising our hammering skills!

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I set this activity up for M, providing him with a large piece of foam, smaller squares of foam, hammer and golf tees (got these from Aldi, they are smaller and wider than golf tees we’ve used before).

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I’d left the resources out for M, waiting to see what he would do, but found he did need me to instigate the activity.

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 But then he was off!
At first he struggled to hammer the tees in and I noticed he had the hammer in his left hand (see pic two  above).  I suggested that he might want to try holding it in his other hand and M found this much easier.23

He was very focused as he hammered the golf tees and returned to the activity throughout the week.

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Checking to make sure his golf tee was all the way in.

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Once M had had plenty of time to explore the activity, I introduced the idea of drawing on the foam and then hammering the golf tees onto the lines.

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I could have drawn shapes or numbers etc myself on the foam, but I wanted the activity to be interesting to M, so allowed him to take control of what was drawn on the foam.

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As well as positioning the hammer correctly on the golf tee, M now also had to make sure the golf tee was positioned on the line.

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Although I had been putting this activity out of reach of the little ones (the end of the golf tees were quite pointed), I decided to let them explore it under supervision and without the hammer!
F was first over, choosing to balance the golf tees on top of the foam, which proved to be quite tricky but he persisted.079.1

K came over to see what was going on, observed F balancing the tees and copied.

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However, he quickly realised this was quite tricky and without support, chose to flip them over and push them into the foam.

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The boys played side-by-side each focused on their own way of using the golf tees.
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L was the last to visit the table.  She watched an older child pushing the golf tees into the foam…

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and adopted this method of play.

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Then the little ones discovered something that neither I, nor the older children had realised, the golf tees could be stacked inside each other!

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This added a whole new dimension to play!

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Working hard to fit the golf tees inside one another.

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The older children had retrieved the hammer from the table, so I added a plastic one for the younger children.  I don’t think the little ones, given their current stage of development would benefit at present from using a real hammer, but I would be looking to introduce it (under supervision) in the future.
This activity will remain out next week as the children really enjoyed in and it remained popular throughout the week.