In our discovery zone, the children were exploring and building various buildings with our blocks. They have recently been interested in castles so we started to research various castles in Scotland and why they were built. We learned that there are over 1000 in Scotland and they are all different shapes, sizes and colours. We even found a pink one! We loved learning all the names of the different parts of a castle, learning about battlements, moats and portcullis. The boys and girls also enjoyed learning the names of the castles, Eilean Donan Castle was our favourite so some of us started to try and build our own version of Eilean Donan Castle with loose parts. The children started role playing with their castles and even started a war between their armies! The armies were made up of number stones and the higher the number was on your army the stronger and more powerful they were.
Once the war was over and one of the queen’s won, we were interested to learn about our Queen and where she lives. We learned all about how long Queen Elizabeth reigned for and even looked at pictures of her coronation. We couldn’t believe how young she was when she became queen! We even learned who was going to rule after Queen Elizabeth. We now know that Queen Elizabeth lives in Windsor Castle but all her important business happens in Buckingham Palace, which we learned took 150 years to finish building! We took our roleplaying and decided to build a castle with our big blocks. We worked so hard to build a tower with battlements at the top and even built our walls and a drawbridge which you needed a secret password to enter. The boys and girls had a throne, which they took turns on as the kings and queens of Spateston.
