Building Blocks: Unlocking Early Learning Benefits

Toy blocks, seemingly simple playthings, serve as powerful learning tools for children of all ages. From basic motor skill development in infancy to fostering complex cognitive abilities and social skills in older children, building blocks offer a wealth of educational opportunities. Whether they are simple wooden planks or interlocking plastic bricks like LEGO® and MEGA Bloks®, these solid shapes used for construction play provide a foundation for lifelong learning.

Early Block Play: Infancy and Toddlerhood

Even infants can benefit from playing with blocks. While their initial interactions may seem simple, they are laying the groundwork for future skills.

Motor Skill Development

Stacking and arranging toy blocks stimulates a young child’s motor development. As babies reach, grasp, and manipulate blocks, they hone their fine motor skills, improving their ability to control small movements. They also develop hand-eye coordination, learning to control the speed with which they reach and move their hands, so that they will eventually be capable of slowing down as they place one block on top of another.

Developmental Milestones

A study tracking the development of 37 babies revealed that only 16% of 10-month-olds could stack one item on top of another. By 12 months, approximately 45% had reached this milestone, and some were stacking two or more items. By 14 months, most babies were stacking, and 38% could build structures by stacking two or more pieces, forming a three-component “tower.” By the age of 24 months, most children are capable of stacking 6 blocks or more, but this ability is rooted in previous experience. To become a proficient builder, your baby needs lots of practice!

Sensory Exploration

Providing children with nontoxic and baby-safe blocks at an early age allows them to investigate the tactile and visual properties of the blocks. Infants can explore blocks by handling, shaking, tossing, sorting, and carrying them.

Read also: Understanding Student Unions

Spatial Reasoning and Cognitive Flexibility

Block play is closely linked to the development of spatial skills and cognitive flexibility.

Spatial Skills

There are links between spatial skills and construction play. Studies have documented similar correlations in older school children and adolescents. It may be that kids with advanced spatial skills are more motivated to play with toy blocks! However, experimental evidence suggests that we can boost spatial reasoning abilities by encouraging kids to tinker and build. Researchers refer to reproducing a structure from a model or blueprint as structured block play, and it may be particularly helpful for honing spatial skills. After a group of 8-year-olds participated in just five, 30-minute sessions of structured block play, they showed improvements in mental rotation. In addition, brain scans revealed changes in the way their brains processed spatial information. Kids in a control group did not exhibit these changes.

Cognitive Flexibility

“Cognitive flexibility” is the ability to quickly shift your focus from one relevant stimulus to another. In an experiment on 69 preschoolers, some of the kids were randomly assigned to engage in daily sessions of structured block play. The tasks were relatively simple at first (e.g., “build a tower”). By the end of the study, the children who’d participated in structured block play showed greater improvements in cognitive flexibility compared with kids in a control group.

Language Development

Construction play can also contribute to language development in young children.

Enriched Vocabulary

Very young children develop better language skills when they engage in regular block play. Psychologists like to contrast modes of thinking - convergent and divergent. Convergent thinking is what we practice when we reason according to strict rules or logical principles, usually in search of the one, “correct” solution. By contrast, divergent thinking is more flexible, and appropriate for situations where there are multiple solutions to a problem. There is evidence that kids develop an enriched understanding of spatial vocabulary (words like “below”, “inside”, and “edge”) when we talk with them about spatial relationships.

MEGA Bloks® Study

In a study sponsored by MEGA Bloks®, researchers gave blocks to middle- and low-income toddlers in the United States. Kids in the treatment group received two sets of MEGA Bloks® - 80 plastic interlocking blocks and a set of specialty blocks, including cars and people-at the beginning of the study. Kids in the control group did not get blocks until the end of the study. Parents in both groups were asked to keep time diaries of their children’s activities. After six months, each parent completed a follow-up interview that included an assessment of the child’s verbal ability (the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories).

It’s not clear why block play had this effect. One possibility is that the children didn’t really differ after all - it was merely that parents in the treatment group perceived greater language competence in their children. But it’s also plausible that parents in the treatment group spent more time talking with their children, which could explain the language gains. After all, children learn to talk by engaging in lots of one-on-one conversations with other people.

Creativity and Problem-Solving

Block play encourages both convergent and divergent thinking, fostering creativity and problem-solving skills.

Convergent vs. Divergent Thinking

Block play can involve convergent problem-solving (as when a child is challenged to reproduce a specific structure from a model or diagram). For example, years ago, researchers presented 64 preschoolers with a set of chunky, block-like foam pieces. Half of the kids were randomly assigned to play with these pieces in a convergent way (fitting them, like puzzle pieces, into precisely cut-out openings).

Creativity and Divergent Thinking

More recently, a smaller study of 33 primary school children tested the effects of weekly, two-hour sessions of construction play. They also spent a portion of each session using the blocks in a structured math lesson. The researchers gave all the children a battery of cognitive tests before the intervention began, and then re-evaluated them at the end of the school year. Whereas creativity and divergent thinking scores didn’t change for kids in the control group, they improved substantially for children in block play group.

Read also: Innovative Medical Education Model

Mathematical Skills

There is a connection between block play and mathematics.

Links to Mathematical Skills

Numerous studies have revealed links between a child’s ability to recreate specific structures and his or her current mathematical skills. This doesn’t mean playing with toy blocks causes long-term enhancements in mathematical ability.

Arithmetic Skills

Sharlene Newman and her colleagues tested the effects of construction play on arithmetic skills in 8-year-olds. Kids in the free block play condition didn’t experience any notable changes, but the story was different for structured block play. After structured block play, children “showed significant improvements in both addition and subtraction performance”.

Social and Emotional Development

Cooperative construction projects can enhance social skills and promote emotional growth.

Social Interaction

Research suggests that kids become friendlier and more socially-savvy when they work on cooperative construction projects. For example, in studies of children with autism, kids who attended play group sessions with toy blocks made greater social improvements than did kids who were coached in the social use of language. This highlights the potential of block play as a tool for social development.

Cooperation and Teamwork

When two or more children huddle around a collection of blocks, they're faced with the challenge of working together towards a mutual goal. It might be constructing a castle or building a zoo. Regardless - the need for cooperation quickly becomes evident. Cooperation is more than merely taking turns building with the blocks. It involves a certain degree of empathy, patience, and collaborative thinking. Teamwork in block play often requires a delicate balance of give-and-take. Children have to share blocks, agree on the project at hand, and sometimes compromise on their design elements. This provides a natural setting for them to practise negotiation and conflict resolution skills.

Once a collective vision is agreed upon in the blocks area, task distribution often follows. This moment teaches children the concept of roles and responsibilities. Someone might be responsible for building the walls, while another focuses on crafting the towers. This sense of shared responsibility fosters early leadership skills and the understanding of how teamwork can accomplish what individuals alone cannot.

Problem-Solving as a Team

Inevitably, disagreements will surface. It's at these moments that young children learn to sort out disagreements constructively. Rather than creating an argument, these disputes can become opportunities for learning how to communicate clearly, listen to others, and find a solution that respects everyone’s ideas.

Scientific and Engineering Principles

Construction play provides valuable lessons about architecture and engineering.

Understanding Physical Forces

Builders who create small-scale structures must cope with the same laws of physics that constrain the design of bridges and cathedrals. That’s why engineers and scientists build physical models: It helps them test and explore their ideas. Moreover, it appears that students learn best about physical forces when they experience them first-hand. So if we want kids to develop an intuitive grasp of mechanical forces - like the forces of tension and compression - construction play offers excellent learning opportunities.

Scientific Reasoning

As children engage in block play, they investigate early concepts of science that go well beyond the classroom curriculum. They explore the laws of gravity, understand the importance of weight distribution, and grasp the concepts of stability and balance. Every tower built and knocked down becomes a lesson in these scientific principles.

Enhancing Block Play Experiences

To maximize the benefits of block play, consider the following tips:

Guided Discovery

The research above suggests that kids get more from block play when someone demonstrates how to build with them. Kids also benefit when we talk with them about spatial ideas. Free-wheeling block play is important. But, as we’ve seen, it’s likely that kids also reap special benefits from trying to match a structure to a template. Even 3-year-olds may be ready to try this…if you stick with very simple structures involving only two or three blocks. To get started, create a model with blocks for your child to reproduce.

Incorporating Accessories

Take a cue from the experiment on language skills in toddlers: The researchers didn’t just give kids toy blocks. They also provided children with appropriately-scaled accessory toys, like people and cars. Researcher Janie Heisner used toy blocks and block- accessories to illustrate parts of the stories she read to kids in a preschool. After each story, the kids were given access to the props. This tactic seemed to increase pretend play.

Encouraging Imagination

Construction play seems so obviously mechanical. It’s easy to think only of the development of practical engineering skills. But kids also benefit from fantasy and make-believe. For example, experiments suggest that kids become more creative and inventive when they are exposed to stories about magic. And encouraging preschoolers to engage in imaginative, fantastical, pretend play may help them develop better executive function skills, like impulse control.

Creating a Supportive Environment

Many early childhood educators believe that every classroom should have a full set of unit blocks, assorted props tied to children’s current interests and experiences, open storage shelves, and plenty of space and time to build and rebuild invented and familiar structures.

The Enduring Power of Block Play

Playing with blocks offers many tremendous benefits to young children. It's not just about keeping little hands busy or providing a resource that every other play-based teacher seems to have. When it comes to capturing a child's focus and attention, few activities are as engaging or as beneficial as block play. It's not just personal observation either - there's quite a bit of scientific research to back up these claims. This engaging activity captivates children's attention and builds concentration skills in a way that not many others can. Because kids are so engrossed in achieving their vision, they will frequently spend more time at block play than they might with other investigation activities.

As an early childhood educator, you know that as young children prepare to enter school, these motor skills will play an essential role in their school readiness. Walking up stairs, sitting on the carpet, pencil control, cutting along a line, and even pressing the keys on a keyboard all require refined motor skills.

Caroline Pratt, an innovative and revered early childhood educator, designed wooden unit blocks in the 1930s. She understood that the blocks would engage children’s creativity, captivate their curiosity, challenge them to be problem-solvers, and offer children a tool to collaborate.

tags: #building #blocks #early #learning #benefits