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Creating Environments for Learning Third Edition Julie Bullard

Book Cover will be inserted here.

Chapter 9

Developing Block and Building Centers

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

“With the help of a child, blocks of wood come to life. Blocks become airports or empires. Blocks become stadiums and skyscrapers, houses and hovels, castles and, today, even condominiums” (Cody, 1989, p. 109).

These open-ended materials provide a multi-disciplinary curriculum where children of all developmental levels can engage in many skills simultaneously.

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

What do children learn in the block center?

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Math skills

There is a strong relationship between spatial skills (such as the ability to manipulate and visualize shapes) and mathematics.

Did you know?

Children who perform well in preschool block building take more math classes, receive higher standardized math test scores, and have better math grades in middle and high school than children who are less competent preschool block builders (Wolfgang, Stannard, & Jones, 2001).

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Children’s spatial skills increase when they:

learn spatial language (above, below, beside)

develop images of structures they plan to build

Did you know?

Children’s ideas about shapes, while not always accurate, often stabilize by age six (Clements, 2004).

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Quantity or Number Sense

“Quantity or number sense may be as important to math development as phonemic awareness is to emergent literacy.” (Ohara, Demarest and Shakless, 2005, p. 4)

Did you know?

Classifying, seriating, and using conservation in block and construction play relates to higher standardized achievement test scores in kindergarten and in first grade (Pasnak, Madden, Martin, Malabonga and Holt, 1996: Pasnak, McCutchen, Holt, and Campbell, 1991).

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Literacy Skills

Visual discrimination

Fine motor skills and coordination needed for writing

Authentic reasons to read and write (if materials are available)

Oral language when developing cooperative structures and explaining an idea

Did you know?

Children use more oral language and exhibit a greater diversity of vocabulary in the block center than the dramatic play area or a theme based center (Isbell and Raines, 1991).

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Cognitive skills-symbolic representation:

Children represent symbolically when they use one thing to represent something else.

Toddler: a block for a car

Preschooler: represent their ideas and concepts about a structure

Did you know?

Symbolic representation is one of the most important achievements in the preschool years (Piaget, 1962).

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Science Skills

properties of materials, stability, and balance

cause and effect

prediction (what will happen if …)

scientific content (force and motion, simple machines)

processes (questioning, problem solving, analyzing, reasoning, communicating, investigating, making representations)

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Social Emotional Skills

Develop a feeling of competence

Learn to negotiate, interact, and cooperate

Opportunity to scaffold or support other’s learning

Did you know?

Children as young as three scaffold other’s learning in the block area through giving non-verbal and verbal cues (Johnson-Pynn and Nisbit, 2002).

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Geography Skills

Children learn about buildings, structures, and maps as they build with blocks.

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Art

Block building is a form of transitory art

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Children proceed through stages of block building:

Stage 1-Prebuilding

Stage 2-Rows and towers

Stage 3-Bridging

Stage 4-Enclosures

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Children proceed through stages of block building:

Stage 5-Patterns

Stage 6-Naming of structures and early representation

Stage 7-Reproduction

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

An effective block center:

is large enough to accommodate several children

is semi enclosed to protect the builder with a no builder zone near block shelves

provides a stable building surface

provides a place to save structures

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

An effective block center:

provides block storage on low open shelves arranged is a way that demonstrates a mathematical relationship between blocks

provides attractively displayed, accessory materials based upon the children’s level of development and interests

provides anti-bias materials that represent a variety of cultures and people with disabilities

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Closely examine this picture. What is the children’s stage of development? What are their interests?

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Block play accessories include:

open-ended materials, teacher or child-created materials, and purchased materials to extend children’s building opportunities

motivational materials to provide ideas and inspiration

writing materials

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Children write in the block center for a variety of purposes including:

designating ownership of their building

identifying the type of building

saving structures

making blueprints or structures they plan to create

making sketches of completed structures

creating props

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Teachers facilitate learning through providing experiences

Guests (architect, carpenter)

Field trips (visit different types of buildings-tepee, trailer house)

View structures on walks and talk about building features

What others??

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Teachers facilitate learning through providing time (at least one hour):

Are these activities conducive to in-depth block building or not?

assigning children to the block area

rotating children every 15 minutes

girls only block days

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Teachers facilitate learning through acknowledging block builders by:

photographing or sketching structures

displaying photos and sketches

sending photos and sketches home to parents

including photos and sketches in portfolios

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Teachers facilitate learning through acknowledging block builders by:

labeling structures with the builder’s name

encouraging children to reflect upon & discuss structures

allowing structures to remain standing until children are finished building

encouraging children to draw or write about their structures

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Teachers facilitate learning through:

modeling interacting together to create a building

asking questions to help the child think more deeply (techniques, building intentions, materials they used, difficulty in carrying out the plan, ideas for changing, modifying, and revising building)

helping problem solve a building dilemma

making suggestions if children appear stuck

helping measure buildings

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Teachers facilitate learning through introducing block challenges:

build a tower as high as you can

create a map of the classroom

create a city

determine how to get someone from one floor to the next

What are some other ideas?

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Teachers facilitate learning through assessment

Assessing and making changes to the block and building area as needed

Observing and documenting children’s learning

What developmental areas can be assessed as you observe children in the block area?

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Teachers facilitate learning through implementing group “block talks” such as:

showing pictures of buildings and discussing them

providing information through guest speakers

motivating building or extending learning by reading books

introducing new building materials

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Teachers facilitate learning through implementing group “block talks” such as:

making plans for block projects

examining photos and sketches of children’s current block buildings and discussing design elements

conducting a “walk about” where the group examines each other’s block structures

facilitating a builder’s circle (like a writer’s circle) where children discuss their building with a small group

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

Teachers facilitate learning through implementing group “block talks” such as:

discussing and problem solving building dilemmas

using blocks to demonstrate and teach a lesson (incline plane, naming blocks, examine and discuss different block’s characteristics—sides, points, angles)

using blocks for prediction and problem solving (how many blocks will it take to cover a certain area)

discussing and analyzing block data

Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight, 3e Bullard

“Out of the imaginings of a child, blocks become everything! Lacking imagination, blocks revert to chunks of wood… waiting to become again” (Cody, 1989, p. 109) .