Natural Wooden Building Blocks

Types

• Wooden blocks come in several sizes, from table-top sets to blocks that are large enough to built a boat, a fort, or other large structures taller than a young builder.
  While wooden blocks come in colors, the most long-lasting ones are sanded smooth with a clear coat of polyurethane to protect small fingers from splinters. Children attending a nursery or childcare program will immediately identify these as "school blocks," and from an early age, children know that blocks are to build.

Features

• Unlike a toy that makes noises when a button is pushed or playsets, such as farms or zoos with limited numbers of pieces, or even jigsaw puzzles, the most appealing and educational feature of natural wooden blocks is that they are a "nondirectional" toy.
  Toys that require a series of operations in sequence or toys that have a "place for everything" teach children to organize their thinking and follow directions. Nondirectional toys, on the other hand, rely on a child's imagination in order to "work." There is no "right way" to build with blocks. Laying them flat to make a road for cars, adding pillars and arches for a fire-station, that somehow transforms into a zoo and a hospital all together, only suggests the imaginative power of blocks. the only rules attached to blocks are the basic laws of physics, which reinforce themselves by falling down when violated.

Time Frame

• Watching children play with blocks teaches you a great deal about how children think, both logically and imaginatively. Child specialists can follow stages of block-building as a way to understand whether a child is developing on schedule or perhaps experiencing developmental delays in some areas.
  General stages of block-building often develop simultaneously or out of order, but these are the learning stages you can expect:
  1) Tactile learning. Natural wooden blocks feel good to touch. A young child exploring blocks may spend a lot of time just touching or rubbing them. Part of the exploring may involve choosing a single block to carry around and push or rub on other surfaces. Picking up, dropping and throwing blocks are also means of exploring them--wooden blocks have heft and weight. They make interesting noises when dropped on a bare floor, let children use large muscles to propel and retrieve them, and, yes, they hurt if they hit you. All things to learn.
  2) A second stage involves exploring how blocks organize. This stage may involve getting them off the shelf one by one or in bunches, arranging and rearranging them flat on the floor. What is being learned is an assortment of properties: put a block down and it sits there. Straight edges meet and separate, and they fit together in different ways from curved or round blocks. Some blocks are the same, some are different from each other. Some can be walked or sat on and some cannot.
  3) Usually within a fairly short time (anywhere from a week to a month or so), children begin exploring the excitement of building with blocks. Lots of learning happens fast during this period, even though it may appear that building the same three-block tower and watching it fall is going to last until college! What your child is absorbing is basic physics and muscle control--a tower cannot be thrown together like a salad. Concepts of balance, symmetry, big, small, more, less, same, different, up, and down all compete for your child's absorption, along with understandings of success, failure, and trying again. With so much going on, you may notice your child begin a new skill, then return to old familiar ones (like carrying or rubbing blocks) while the new knowledge sinks in.

Significance

• The importance of building with blocks is beginning to become apparent, and, once building begins, the pace of learning accelerates even more. As children become more skilled with blocks, their goal becomes to envision structures and carry out what they have imagined. New concepts, mostly related to math, become important: if one column-block will not support an arch-block, how many are needed? If you need two columns the first time, do you need them every time? Do more work as well?
  Even children unable to speak can articulate basic number concepts with building. Structures become more daring, involving the creation of angles and asymmetric balancing techniques.
  Just as block building can assist early language learning, it also stimulates language. Sometimes an adult will need to provide new vocabulary--"we call that a ramp"--more often, open-ended questions or comments, such as "tell me what's going on over there" or "how did you make that work?" will stimulate a child to use a surprising amount of language you did not even realize he or she knew.

Potential

• Block-building is a kind of play that lets children practice social skills with each other, with or without conversation. Sharing a common interest is a challenge for young children, and sometimes sharing a single toy is too frustrating to make playtime fun.
  Blocks by nature come in quantity and variety. Since they tend to be more fun when put together (although taking apart is a pleasure too), working together, taking turns and playing cooperatively are easier to master than with some other toys.

Benefits

• The benefits of playing with natural wooden blocks are many and varied. Although it is not as common as it once was, blocks still play educational roles in many kindergarten and some older elementary classrooms. They provide ways to teach math concepts and language that children may struggle with when equipped only with paper and pencil. Assembling a "dozen" blocks and then putting six away is a very nonthreatening way to teach subtraction, collectives, and fractions. Children who may be uncomfortable talking about or drawing a picture of their favorite part of a story may find expressing their understanding in building an easier way to express their understanding. Because of their nondirectionality, children who worry about succeeding at tasks can experience success through building. And blocks give parents and children something to do with their hands and a relaxing activity to pursue that can facilitate conversation about difficult issues.
  Yes, blocks take space. Yes, they hurt when thrown. Yes, they make quite a racket when they collapse. Yes, cleanup takes time. In spite of all those considerations, natural wooden blocks are one of the best gifts you can give your child--and yourself.