Block Center

      Block play is a staple in any good child care setting.  In the Beginnings Workshop, "Block Play,"  Stuart Reifel, provides practical suggestions for supporting beneficial block play, as well as conveying these benefits of the activity:"We know from years of research and teaching that children develop as they play with blocks.  All children begin by exploring the qualities of blocks, including size, shape, weight, texture, and color.  When a teacher talks about those qualities while children are exploring, it gives children valuable language that is linked to their experiences.  Teacher talk also lets children know that what they are doing with blocks is valued.  As children begin to put blocks together, they begin to learn about length, height, volume, physical space, and the power they can feel as they control it.  By creating shapes with blocks, we begin to see how we give shape to our lives."By the time children are two or three years old, their block play is nearly always about something.  Children may create a shape, but they then decide that what they have made is a spaceship or a house for their dolls.  Piaget tells us that block play is a kind of symbolic representation.  Children create and play with meanings that are important to them, whether the meanings relate to home and babies, farms and animals, spaceships and monsters, or Power Rangers.®  Much block play shows us what people are thinking about.  It is as children represent while they play with blocks that we can enrich their experiences."
Article from ChildCareExchange.com.

This student is in the stage of building barriers or fences with blocks. Notice he even did a pattern of tall and short! How cool!



These students have a more elaborate plan for their blocks. As they create their city together they build bridges and doors.

Another step in block play is of course the demo! Here a student uses his legs as he kicks down his block tower.  What fun we have when we use our bodies to demolish our minds creations!





Below are the 7 main stages of Block Play and some pictures to correspond.

Stages of Block PlaySTAGE 1- Blocks are carried around and are not used
in construction.

STAGE 2- Building begins. Rows are made either vertically
(stacking) or horizontally (on the floor). Destruction occurs.

 STAGE 3- Stage 3 involves a great deal of repetition,
but bridging also takes place. Bridging consists
of two blocks with a space between them,
connected by a third block.

 STAGE 4- Enclosures are constructed. Enclosures are four
blocks placed in such a way that they enclose
a space.

STAGE 5- Decorative patterns begin to appear. Much
symmetry is seen, but the structures are not
named yet.

 

STAGE 6- Structures are named for use in dramatic play.
The names relate to how the structure will
be used.

Look at our boat we made!

STAGE 7- Buildings often reproduce or symbolize actual
structures with which the children are familiar.
There is also a great deal of dramatic play around
the block structures.