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Educational Value of Play - Blocks
Blocks
Children of all ages love to explore with blocks. Small babies should have a variety of soft, colourful blocks they can manipulate without hurting themselves. There is a vast array of blocks and construction sets for toddlers and pre-schoolers on the market, whilst toys like playmobil and 3D Georello offer older children a challenge.
- Physical Development
- Language/ Social Development
- Developing Mathematical Concepts
- Creating a richer experience with blocks
Physical Development
Blocks 
provide an excellent sensory toy for children to play and experiment with. They come in all shapes and sizes and can be brightly coloured, make sounds and are often made out of different varieties of materials. Blocks made out of different varieties of materials appeal to children as they feel different to touch. This helps in the development of their tactile senses.
The manipulation of blocks also develops a child's gross motor skills. This can be seen as they move around the floor to construct their models, when they reach up high to get a block off the top of their tower, or when they get down low to fit their car into the garage.
Additionally hand-eye and fine motor coordination develop, as children learn to place and balance blocks in the correct places while making their constructions. This helps to develop the neccesary skills to delicately place blocks on top of one another without the rest of them toppling over.
Language/Social Development
The variety of shapes, colours and decorations of blocks available, makes them a powerful stimulation for language development. Through the use of blocks children can learn to name different colours (red, blue, yellow) and shapes (sphere, cube, cone) and distinguish between different sizes (large, medium, small). They learn to use positional words such as under, over, next to and on top of to describe where they are placing their blocks.
The addition of cars animals, dolls etc. to their block sets enables children to re-create real life senarios such as zoos, cities and airports . This stimulates their imagination while extending their block experience.
Playing with blocks is the perfect way to help develop a child's social skills. The beauty about blocks is that children can play independently, building their self confidence and developing individual creativity or they provide the perfect medium for children to play together. Here they learn to share materials and work together in their construction making use of each other's ideas to create something all are proud of. Playing with blocks is also a wonderful way for parents to bond and share time with their children.
Developing Mathematical Concepts
Blocks are a very rich source of developing mathematical concepts. Through the manipulation of these toys, early concepts of counting, shapes, sizes, measurement, pattern making, the operations (+ - x /) as well as problem solving skills are developed and reinforced as they play. Children are intially introduced to the concept of 3D shapes as they play and construct with blocks . They learn the attributes of these shapes as they play,.such as how many sides (faces), edges and corners the different shapes have.
Playing with blocks also provides an opportunity for children to discover which shapes fit together with no spaces between them (such as cubes) and which shapes leave gaps (such as spheres). The mathematical term for this is tessellation and is explored further during early schooling. While joining and separating different shapes children can discover that two triangles make a square and other mathematical concepts like this. This also allows them to develop an understanding of pattern. Once this understanding is established children can use blocks to make and repeat patterns.
The language and concepts of measurement develop as children experiment making towers - taller, shorter, wider or thinner ones. They can estimate how many blocks will be needed to make a driveway go from their road to their house which develops their understanding of the concept of distance.
Working out how many small blocks are needed to make one longer block introduces children to whole-part relationships. For example they may see that 5 of their cubes are the same length as 1 of their rectangles. Furthermore it introduces them to the concepts of substraction, addition and multiplication. For example:
- if they line up 5 blocks and use 2 of them they have 3 left - subtraction.
- if they stack 6 blocks and are trying to make it the same as another tower which has 11 blocks, they need 5 more - addition.
- making equal stacks of say 3 blocks develops concepts of making equal sets (number) and multiplication. For example by creating 2 stacks of 3 blocks you will have 6 blocks.
Problem solving skills develop as children work out what to do if their car won't fit under the bridge, or their figure won't fit through the door of their house.
The simple task of putting their blocks away may mean children learn how they need to arrange and re-arrange their blocks to fit back into the box. Often they will need to match their blocks to pictures - equating 2D images with their 3D block.
This learning, despite being important to their development, is all incidental. It happens unconsciously, as children creatively play with their blocks.
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Creating a Richer Experience with Blocks:
To create a richer play experience for your children try adding a combination of the following suggestions to their block sets:
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playdough to make trees and people |
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toy dinosaurs |
boxes to be 'buildings'
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