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EYFS best practice - All about… junk modelling

The flexibility and abundance of ‘junk’ give children enormous learning benefits and unrivalled creative opportunities, explains Annette Rawstrone

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Thinking back to our childhoods, the majority of us will remember constructing with cereal boxes, toilet rolls and yoghurt pots. Most early years settings still ask parents for donations of recycled materials and have an area for junk modelling. But how can practitioners take this long-standing tradition, support children’s work and elevate it to be truly creative?

The beauty of junk modelling – the act of offering recycled materials to construct with – is that the materials are relatively worthless so children can be given the freedom to build what they want, with the simple addition of resources such as tape and glue.

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