Objective
In Trail Making, the children engage in creative construction play in that they cooperate on building a motorically challenging trail from loose materials in the outdoor play area. When the children are allowed to play on the obstacle course, they challenge their own body control. The game can also be extended to involve materials, shapes, length, prepositions and so forth.
Instructions
- Ask the children to gather loose materials to make one cohesive trail with a beginning and end. With preference, they can work together in groups where each group makes their own trail. The trail can be straight, it can bend, it can go round in a circle or be formed in another exciting way. Some trails can be long and others shorter. Here there is room for all the children’s creative solutions.
- When the trails are finished, the children can test the different trails out.
- After a while, the children can be challenged to go down the trail in different ways, for example, by walking, crawling, walking backwards and wiggling.
Variation
- The different trails can be the starting point for reflection questions, for example: Which trail is the longest? Which trail is the shortest? How can we measure how long the trail is?
- You can also talk about the course that has been built and what to do with the various ‘obstacles’. Here the children must, among others, use prepositions such as under and jump over. The adult can also ask questions about the obstacle course, for example, “What is in front of the bucket? What comes after the rope? What shape is the cover?
Equipment
Various objects that are slightly flat for the children to build with, for example,
covers, rope, planks, boxes, logs, buckets, drums or furniture