When the winter weather encourages more time indoors, Sorella Early Learning transforms our spaces into a hub of creative engineering. July is a month where we love to set our children the most exciting, open-ended building challenges — and watch as little engineers get to work with remarkable focus, determination, and ingenuity.
What Is Engineering in Early Childhood?
Engineering in early childhood isn’t about textbooks or technical diagrams. It is about giving children real problems to solve using real materials — and then stepping back to let them think, try, fail, adjust, and try again.
The engineering mindset we nurture in young children includes:
– Curiosity: “I wonder what would happen if…?”
– Problem-solving: “This isn’t working — how can I fix it?”
– Persistence: “It fell down, so I’ll try a different way.”
– Collaboration: “You hold this part while I attach that part.”
– Creative thinking: “What if we used this material instead?”
– Mathematical reasoning: measuring, comparing, estimating
These skills are among the most important a child can develop — and they are best built through joyful, purposeful play.
Our July Building Challenges at Sorella Early Learning
Challenge 1: The Tallest Tower
Using only 20 blocks, can you build the tallest tower that doesn’t fall? Children test different shapes, bases, and balancing strategies, learning about stability, centre of gravity, and trial-and-error through real experience.
Challenge 2: The Bridge
Using cardboard, tape, and recycled materials, build a bridge that can hold the weight of a toy car. This challenge introduces concepts of span, load, and structural support in a completely hands-on way.
Challenge 3: The Warm House
How would you build a shelter that keeps a small toy animal warm? Using fabric, boxes, wool, and natural materials, children design and construct miniature winter shelters — linking engineering to our winter season theme and to caring for living things.
Challenge 4: The Marble Run
Using cardboard tubes, ramps, and boxes, children design a course for a marble to travel from top to bottom. This challenge involves planning, sequencing, physics concepts (gravity, momentum), and a great deal of trial and refinement.
Challenge 5: The Boat That Floats
Can you make a boat from recycled materials that floats and holds weight? Our water table becomes a testing station as children experiment with different shapes and materials, exploring buoyancy through genuine scientific inquiry.
Challenge 6: The Paper Bridge
Using only 5 sheets of paper and tape, build a bridge that spans a 30cm gap. Paper engineering is one of the most beautifully simple and challenging STEM activities for young children — folding, rolling, and shaping paper into surprisingly strong structures.
The Role of Documentation in Engineering Learning
At Sorella Early Learning, we photograph and document children’s engineering journeys — capturing not just the finished product but the process: the planning, the setbacks, the eureka moments, and the proud smiles. This documentation helps families see the depth of thinking that goes into what might look like “just playing with blocks.”
We also invite children to draw their designs before building — introducing the concept of blueprints and design thinking in the most accessible, age-appropriate way.
Building Skills for Life
The children who build towers, bridges, and boats today are developing the problem-solving, persistence, and creative confidence that will carry them through school, through careers, and through life. At Sorella Early Learning, we take this seriously — and we have enormous fun doing it.
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Sources and Further Reading:
– Raising Children Network – www.raisingchildren.net.au
– Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) – www.acecqa.gov.au
– Early Childhood Australia – www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au
– CSIRO Education – www.csiro.au/education
– The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) – www.acecqa.gov.au/eylf
– Kidspot Australia – www.kidspot.com.au