Essential Resources: Block Play - Big build up

Block play is a staple of early education. The open-ended nature of the basic wooden block is appealing to all age groups. Babies enjoy the sensory experience of holding the blocks and toddlers use schematic traits to transport them around the nursery. Older children build towers, bridges and enclosures, counting and comparing the blocks, measuring distances and using symmetry. Offering a range of solid and hollow blocks of different sizes will provide children with rich opportunities for block play.

SEVEN STAGES OF BLOCK PLAY

Children’s play with blocks changes over time. Harriet Merrill Johnson (1933) identified a series of developmental stages that all block players progress through. Rather than trying to build complex structures with them, when they are not developmentally ready, the seven stages of block play help practitioners to recognise when the child is ready to move on.

There is some variation in the categories, but they are essentially based on the following:

• Stage 1: Transporting – blocks are carried but not used for construction.
• Stage 2: Stacking – blocks are placed in horizontal or vertical rows.
• Stage 3: Bridging – blocks are used to bridge the space between other blocks.
• Stage 4: Enclosures – blocks are used to enclose a space, e.g. when children make a house.
• Stage 5: Patterning – blocks are placed in patterns or symmetrically when building.
• Stage 6: Complex structures – block structures may be named relating to their function.
• Stage 7: Building representations and incorporating dramatic play.

Catriona Gill, head teacher at Green Gables Nursery School and Family Centre and associate tutor at the University of Edinburgh on the Froebel in Early Childhood Practice course, says in her YouTube video ‘Being Me through block play’, ‘What’s interesting is that all children go through the same stages, regardless of what age they have come to block play.’

Sally Cave, head teacher at Guildford Nursery School and Family Centre in Surrey, says practitioners can observe all areas of learning in children’s block play. ‘Children go through different stages of block play and each stage needs time. In the stacking stage, they will often build towers over and over again. They then may begin to build multiple towers alongside one another; this often precedes the bridging stage.’

It is important for children to have repeated opportunities to work at each stage, which is why block play should be a part of everyday continuous provision.

WHAT THEY LEARN

The open-ended nature of the block empowers children to experiment and have a go. In block play, there is no right and wrong, which is liberating for children and helps develop their self-esteem. There is also a great sense of achievement as they learn to balance longer blocks onto shorter ones. As children get older, block play becomes symbolic and can be used to explore or represent ideas. For example, a block can become a telephone or a play station.

Mathematical concepts include:

• When handling blocks, children learn to sort, match, count, compare and measure. It develops their logical thinking and promotes an understanding of size, shape, length, pattern and weight.
• Through bridging, children are developing spatial awareness. They are learning positional words, geometrical forms and they begin to name shapes.
• When creating enclosures, they are developing the concept of perimeter. They might be thinking about numbers, in terms of openings or closures.
• Symmetrical patterns emerge through the patterning stage as children think about balance and symmetry.
  
  

TYPES OF BLOCKS

Good-quality blocks are expensive, but they will continue to have value across the whole of the EYFS curriculum for many years.

Jane Whinnett, head teacher of Balgreen Nursery School and Hope Cottage Nursery School in Edinburgh, and author of the pamphlet Froebel’s Gifts and Block Play Today, says, ‘The blocks in my settings have been there for over 30 years. They are made from sustainable wood and need minimal maintenance. There are four different sets of different scale that integrate with each other and can be used separately. This allows children to build on a large scale, whole-body experience, or on a small scale, with careful finger movements.’

There are two main types of blocks that are used widely:

• Unit blocks: blocks made from solid hardwood that are built on the same basic standard of measurement. For example, each block is a fraction of the standard unit – a quarter or half unit; or a multiple of the standard unit – a double or quadruple unit.
• Hollow blocks: large enough for a child to stand on and build life-sized structures. They are hollow in order to reduce their weight and may have either open or closed edges.

Here are some blocks to include in your everyday provision:

• Community Playthings sells a range of award-winning blocks in different sizes that are durable, simple and come with child-accessible storage: The Pre-School Unit Block Set of 149 blocks, £435; the Single Set of 91 mini unit blocks, £85; the Pre-School Set of 52 Hollow Blocks, £1,258. Sets of Mini Hollow Blocks are also available from £195. For outdoor use, try the Outlast Nursery Classic Set of 64 pieces of interlocking modular blocks, £2,042.
• Early Excellence’s Large Blocks (56 pc Set), £89.95, includes columns, arches and cubes. The Wooden Objects Block Set, £54.95, is good for small-scale building and contains cotton reels and discs with holes; and the Set of Mixed Wooden Figures, £49.95, is a great addition to an enclosure.
• Cosy’s Imagineering Blocks (25pk), £385, are perfect for developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills through opportunities to explore designing, joining, connecting and building. Add the Imagineering Climbing Cubes (2pk), £319.99, and create crawl-through challenges. Store them in the Imagineering Block Trolley, £510. Indoors, try the Unit Blocks in a Box (57pk), £104.99, or the Barkless Tree Blocks (72pk), £73.99.
• Budget Builders Bricks from Hope Education – pack of 30, £29.99, are hollow cardboard blocks that can be flat-packed for pack-away settings. Or, try the solid Outdoor Wooden Skip and Blocks with Cover, £299, filled with wooden blocks of different shapes and sizes.
  
  

RESOURCES

• Froebel’s gifts and block play today by Jane Whinnett: https://www.froebel.org.uk/uploads/documents/Froebels-gifts-and-block-play-today.pdf
• Catriona Gill’s ‘Being Me through block play’: https://wakelet.com/wake/tZ4pZVWflaaYORuMoldJ7
• Early Education’s free Block Area Planning Guide: https://earlyexcellence.com/block-area-planning-guide
• Exploring Learning: Young Children and Blockplay by Pat Gura (1992)
  
  

Tips on how to support block play

Sally Cave, head teacher at Guildford Nursery School, a Froebelian-inspired maintained nursery school, gives some top tips on how to support block play in settings:

• Ensure you have designated a large enough area for the children to be able to experiment and create freely.
• Ensure that the blocks are arranged systematically so that children begin to understand the relationships between the different types of blocks. This also helps them to tidy the blocks away effectively at the end of the session.
• Be aware that children will need to repeat the same things over and over again.
• As they progress, if possible, allow them to start a project and then continue over time, not enforcing always tidying everything away.
• The ‘struggle’ is important when learning how to make a tower stable, or how to bridge across a gap.
• Repetition is key. Children need to repeat things many times for the connections to be made in their brains.
• Don’t rush them through to the next stage.
• Remember to offer guidance only when appropriate. Let children know that they can knock down their own buildings but not other people’s.
• Practitioners scaffold children’s learning by being genuinely interested; asking open-ended questions and letting the children talk about what they are doing.