Block Building

Fascination with building and using blocks or any other building material begins early in life. All of the accessories of infancy – soft animals, bottles, and toys are often a child’s first building materials. As years go by, any material becomes useful for this strong urge in growing children, – books, sand, twigs, leaves, bottles, pans, cards, and on and on, and finally blocks, soft blocks, and then wooden blocks.

The urge to stack, shape, balance, control, add and take away, build up and knock down, experiment and, more, to bring one’s feelings, ideas, and thoughts from inside to outside, are the beginnings of a block curriculum.

In the preschool and early elementary years, block building is one of the core curricula of The Studio School. Children work with both large outdoor blocks and wooden unit blocks daily. A unit block can be doubled and split into halves vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. All shapes relate to the unit. Once the students have some experience with the blocks, we introduce accessories that they can incorporate in their block building work, such as rubber figures and animals that are in scale with the blocks, flooring, roofing slats, clay, woodworking, paper and pencil, and art supplies.

Whenever children are observed playing, we note that sooner or later they begin to build their world as they see and experience it, and to communicate and act out scenarios of their observed experiences, alone and together. Through this process children recreate the world and learn all about it.

As the years go on, the students take trips to study the details of the world. They become more aware of the everyday symbols of modern life they pass on the streets. In a more meaningful context they begin to synthesize this knowledge as they view mailboxes, fire alarms, numbers on houses, stores that sell different things, buildings that house people, animals, cars, buses, taxis, parks, movies, toy stores, everything around our city.

Eventually, the students will begin to build the city. Police and fire stations, post offices, city hall, flower shops, and supermarkets will stand side by side as children remember the detail from their lives and the trips taken while in school. They will return often with their class to study again and again the areas of the city that fascinate them. They will study how the city runs by working with each other in the block scheme.