I saw a fantastic blog that talked about making a geo-board so I decided to give it a go. I got a cheap chopping board in Poundland, some nails and set to work. However I think I must have brought the wrong nails as hammering them in proved very difficult. My daughter, spotting what I was doing, wanted to join in, so I got her one of the tree stump blocks that had been stacked at the front of our house since we had the trees cut down last year and she hammered away. She had much more success than me and to be honest her version looked much more effective, so I gave up with mine and changed to creating geo-boards from the tree stumps.
I was quite skeptical about how much the children would use them. I find usually if I give them anything like this that appears to have a specific educational purpose, they don't want to know, but much to my surprise they loved them.
At first they wanted to create their own.
But found my pre-created versions just as interesting and returned to them repeatedly throughout the week.
They provided lots of opportunities to talk about shape, size, number of sides etc, as well as giving lots of small motor practice. They children were even happy to work cooperatively on one board.
Links to EYFS:
PSRN: Shape, Spaces and Measures - when children name shapes, describe the size of shapes, order p
shapes by size.
PD: Using Equipment and Materials - where children can successfully attach the elastic bands to the boards.
The round ones I painted with acrylic paint and made into geo-boards. I had made these previously out of tree stumps for outside and they proved to be very popular with the children.
