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. 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."

4. A Child’s Theory of Construction • What question is the student asking as they build with blocks? • What concept are they exploring? • Examples:

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Challenging Children’s 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?

9. Challenging Children’s 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?

10. 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

11. 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

12. Preschool children demonstrate understanding of geometry and spatial sense when they: • Say, “You put your horse inside the fence. I’m going to make mine jump over the fence. • Use blocks to build an imaginary playground. • Notice that bubbles look like circles

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. Proximity (Nearness) • When objects are next to each other (i.e. “next to,” “beside,” “on”) & separation.

16. Seriation, Ordering • smallest to largest • Largest to smallest

17. Surrounding, Enclosure • “inside,” “outside”

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

19. Dimensionality • Space is 3-dimensional; items are “on top of,” “under,” or “around” other objects.

20. Teacher As A Facilitator • The teacher role as a researcher…. • What are your questions

21. Stages of Block PlayStage 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.

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. Vocabulary Enrichment • Pile • Stack • In front of • Behind