Educational Value of Play – Blocks
Playing blocks look like they are a simple toy that keeps children occupied for a while. Things are built, torn down, and rebuilt again. But what exactly is going through a child’s mind as they play? In terms of educational value, playing with building toys like blocks is a virtual goldmine of activities and lessons. Your child will learn physical, language and social development as well as mathematics. The amount of learning that can be accomplished by just playing with blocks is truly astounding.
In terms of physical development, your children can gain a great deal through their sensory centres. Blocks come in a multitude of colours, shapes and sizes. Textures can include hard woods or soft fabrics. As the children move about to build the dream they have in their mind’s eye motor skills develop. Hand-eye coordination is improved as they figure out how to balance the different blocks with upon each other.
Language skills and socialization skills grow when playing with blocks as well. With the wide variety of blocks the kids will need to communicate what colour they want to use, the size and so on. This is where they can learn the words for the colours and other characteristics of the blocks. The children can gain the vocabulary that goes with directions such as top and under. Socially the children will begin playing with each other as they expand upon an original idea. For instance, maybe one child starts with building a house, well another may come along and want to add a car or family members and thus the creation of these additional items begin and the progression may not end until they have developed an entire town out of blocks.
Mathematics is another skill that is obtained when playing with blocks. The education that the children receive will include counting, classifying, categorizing and mathematic operations. Division and multiplication is learned as the children discover and experiment to get everything just perfect as they create proportionally built testimonies to their own imaginations. Measurement and patterns are other aspects learned through playing with the blocks.
Educational tools can also include teaching the children tactile abilities with the use of the playing blocks. They can learn that the softer ones made of fabric will bend and give more so than the rubber blocks. Both of these in turn are more giving than wood. Translation from idea to into the fortification of being will amaze an adult. Some learners immediately see the final product before the start out and these children will select very specific blocks so that they can create their idea. Other learners realize as they go along what it is they are building. These children will be grabbing all kinds of blocks to start off with and experiment as they go along and then see the pattern in the blocks part way through their creation process.
The educational value of playing with blocks goes through different stages. In the beginning the youngest children will simply carry the blocks around the room. Next it will be discovered that you can build rows and stack them. As the children get older they will find out how to build a bridge with three blocks followed by learning how to close something in. The children learn how to enclose space and then as they grow their imaginations will grow with them. Their creations can now encompass entire towns or space stations for instance.
The educational value of playing with blocks is astounding and can dramatically improve a child’s ability to perform many different tasks as well as improve their ability to get along with each other. Read more about the educational value of blocks here.
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