Versatile Outlast blocks

Recently we got some of the Outlast blocks for the children to use in the garden area, and they have been so enthusiastic and there's been so many different things that they've been able to do with them, really using their imagination we've seen so many different areas of their learning being brought into their play. They've been able to use their own initiative as well as taking some lead from an adult.

One of the main areas that our older children have covered with the Outlast blocks is it's been supporting their imaginative play and their role play, which is something that can be quite hard to introduce and to embed in an outdoor space. They've used the blocks to build their houses, their cars, their castles. We've even had a volcano play that we that was made with the outlast blocks. It's helped with communication and work together, compromise children having to help each other to carry the blocks and to build if they weren't able to lift themselves.

The outlast blocks have actually helped the children to cover all the areas of learning and development in the garden. One thing that we found quite hard to bring outside in the past has been mathematical development and opportunities for maths, and one activity that stands out is, I had two children that were using the Outlast blocks as a ramp and rolling a ball down the ramp, and they were working out at different heights, whether the ball would go faster or whether it would go slower depending on angle of the slope.

And that was something that they did completely independently that we were able to sit back and watch them discover that for themselves and also literacy. We have a reading area in our garden with some cushions and some rugs, and one of the children wanted to be the storyteller. So she went and found some Outlast blocks and made herself a little bench, a little store so that she could sit on to be the storyteller, to sit and tell the story to the other children.