Block Play in the Preschool Classroom

1
Block Playin thePreschool Classroom
2
Teacher As A Researcher

• What are your questions about children when they
  are playing in the block area?
• Questions about my teaching practice.

3
History of Blocks

• Play is the basis of
• serious learning.
• free materials

4
How Do Children Learn?

• Constructivism the idea that a child makes
  discoveries from his or her own observations,
  explorations, and experiences, and then uses all
  of them to construct understanding.
  Constructivists say that the child is the "maker
  of meaning."

5
A Childs Theory of Construction

• What question is the student asking as they build
  with blocks?
• What concept are they exploring?
• Examples

6
How Do Children Learn?

• Ownership of learning because a student is
  directly involved with the environment and with
  assorted learning experiences, he or she feels
  more invested and more excited about learning.

7
How Do Children Learn?

• Experiential education carefully designed and
  executed educational experiences that are
  reconstructed and reflected upon in a variety of
  ways thorough talking, drawing, building, and
  acting.

8
Aim of Block Play

• Our aim for block builders should be to make it
  possible for them to use their mathematical and
  architectural creativity so that their interests
  and spontaneous pleasure in what they are doing
  are kept alive.

9
Challenging Childrens Thinking

• What did you use to make the ________?
• How do you know this is a _______?
• How are these ______the same?
• How are these ______ different?
• How did you get it to balance?
• How did you make the bridge?

10
Challenging Childrens Thinking

• Can you think of a new way to ____?
• Can you tell me a story about ____?
• Pretend you are a ______? What would you be like?
  Feel like?
• Which _____ do you like best? Why?
• What is the best thing about ___? Why?

11
Preschool children demonstrate understanding of
number concepts when they

• Notice that it takes five scoops of sand to fill
  a cup
• Predict it will take 10 blocks to make a fence,
  then count to see if the prediction is correct
• Count five children and then set the table with
  five plates, napkins, and forks

12
Preschool children demonstrate understanding of
patterns and relationships when they

• Line up small cars in a red, black, red, black,
  red black pattern
• Make a pattern with blocks, ramp, pillar, curve,
  ramp, pillar, curve
• Sponge paint a pattern border around a picture
• Create a rhythmic pattern, clap-clap- snap,
  clap-clap-snap

13
Preschool children demonstrate understanding of
geometry and spatial sense when they

• Say, You put your horse inside the fence. Im
  going to make mine jump over the fence.
• Use blocks to build an imaginary playground.
• Notice that bubbles look like circles

14
Preschool children demonstrate understanding of
measurement when they

• Measure a table using a unit block
• Realize that only a short time is left to clean
  up when the teacher turns over the sand timer
• Count how many cups of sand it takes to fill a
  bucket
• Use a piece of ribbon to measure the height
  of a block building.

15
Understanding of Data Collection, Organization,
Representation

• Sort a collection of blocks into a group with
  straight edges and a group with curved edges
• Make a graph of a sticker collection, sorting by
  color
• Draw a picture of each object that floats and
  sinks after testing them in the water table.

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Proximity (Nearness)

• When objects are next to each other (i.e. next
  to, beside, on) separation.

17
Seriation, Ordering

• smallest to largest
• Largest to smallest

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Surrounding, Enclosure

• inside, outside

19
Continum

• Surfaces are not in bits and pieces but are
  continuous.
• Part-whole relationships

20
Dimensionality

• Space is 3-dimensional items are on top of,
  under, or around other objects.

21
Teacher As A Facilitator

• The teacher role as a researcher.
• What are your questions

22
Stages of Block Play Stage 1 Tote and Carry

• (2-3 year olds) Blocks are carried around to feel
  their smoothness, their weight and to hear what
  kind of sounds they make when they fall. Children
  like to fill containers, dump them out, and
  refill them.

23
Stage 2 (3 year olds) Building Begins

• Children lay the blocks on the floor in rows,
  either horizontally or vertically with much
  repetition. Children may play alone or near other
  children, but rarely in a cooperative way.

24
Stage 3 (3 and 4 year olds) Trial and Error
Bridging

• Two blocks with a space between them, connected
  by a third block. Children learn to bridge by
  trial and error.

25
Stage 4 Enclosures (4 year olds)

• Blocks are placed in such a way that they enclose
  a space. Bridging and enclosing are among the
  earliest "technical" building problems that
  children learn to solve. As children work at
  building enclosures, they learn the spatial
  concept of inside and outside.

26
Stage 5 Representational Building (4 and 5 year
olds)

• At this stage, 4 and 5 year olds add dramatic
  play to their block building. They name their
  structures which relate to a function. Before
  this, children may also have named their
  structures but the names were not necessarily
  related to the function of the building.

27
Stage 6 Building Sociodrama (5 year olds)

• By age 5, group cooperative play is common.
  Children decide beforehand what they want to
  build, and they may reproduce structures that are
  familiar to them. Children may ask to leave their
  structure standing and may play with it again.

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Vocabulary Enrichment

• Pile
• Stack
• In front of
• Behind