This is another long overdue blog post. I think I’ve been stopped in my tracks previously as Kierna Corr from Learning for Life has blogged so wonderfully about her milk crates that really there wasn’t much else left to say on the matter 🙂
Anyway, this past year as I’ve been visiting nurseries, one local nursery has been making an effort to develop their outdoor space and decided to invest in a lot of the H-crates that Kierna advocates. These really are an amazing resource – highly versatile and extremely tough.
Unlike ordinary crates when H-crates are stacked they can be used to create storage. So this can be useful for storage sake … or when creating a home-made mud kitchen…
The stacking doesn’t need to be purely vertical. Look at the approach to container gardening created by putting a few crates together in a fancy way…
As well as creating borders or zones, the H-crates make comfy seating for little people. Here, the children have created a pretend campfire, but I’ve also used them for real campfire seating too. You can also add a padded cushion as a deluxe version…
Whilst visiting the Isle of Man a week ago, I had the privilege of staying at The Venture Centre, who offer various activities. As you can see, milk crates featured in their archery area.
The team challenges also made good use of traditional milk crates. Below are the planks and crates challenge – you have to get your team across an area without anyone touching the ground at any time.
Another challenge included building and climbing the tallest stack of crates. This is definitely not something to be tried at home! People are attached by climbing harnesses, ropes and belayed through a pulley system by their team – look high up on the photo. So you have to consider how to build the stack, climb it and extend the stack by your team passing you crates from below to climb on to. There are 36 black crates, stacked and waiting for action…
There’s no doubt that there are many uses for the humble crate. I’d love to hear from others about their “crate” experiences (every pun intended).
Hi Juliet
My top favourite outdoor provision resource is bread crates as they are so versatile for play. Sometime ago I wrote an article about crates for Practical Preschool magazine – a collection of ideas that I’d seen. It’s available on my website at https://janwhitenaturalplay.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/using-crates-outside-practical-pre-school-issue-69-october-2006/
Jan
Hello Jan – what a fabulous, detailed article – thanks for flagging it up. I hope other visitors to this post go and have a look too.
Great post Juliet, sorry if I ‘blocked’ you posting for a while!! I honestly can’t imagine how we would function without them now. Great post & thanks for the mention.