Why Blocks?

Once we’d made space in their classrooms the first grade students at Rato Bangala couldn’t wait to get started working with blocks.  In fact one group, returning from PE class to find new, still unpacked blocks stacked in the room began to dance and sing and to jostle one another for the chance to touch the new materials.  I’ll talk about their initial explorations in my next post, but before I describe in detail the work the kids did when they got the chance to really engage with the blocks, I’d like to revisit some of the reasons these materials are so highly valued in progressive education classrooms.   

Progressive educators seek to create rich experience as the basis for learning and believe that children need opportunities to process and recreate these experiences in multiple ways.  With blocks, learners can do just that, exploring and building in hands-on, multi-faceted, open-ended ways both individually and in groups.  Blocks enhance mathematical thinking and spatial reasoning and provide wonderful opportunities for dramatic play.  They lend themselves to complex problem solving, allow for artistic exploration and are important tools for fostering language development.   To quote the visionary educator (and Bank Street founder) Lucy Sprague Mitchell:  

The wonder of blocks is the many-sided constructive experiences they yield to the many-sided constructive child – and every child is such if guided by a many-sided constructive parent or teacher.

If you’d like to learn more about using blocks in the classroom, I recommend The Block Book (Elizabeth S. Hirsch, ed; Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1996.).  The quote above is from page 10.   

Also, see this recent article from the New York Times about the “rediscovery” of unit blocks: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/nyregion/with-building-blocks-educators-going-back-to-basics.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=nyregion.