Before Minecraft, The Blocks Were Made Of Wood
For our Tools of the Trade series, we're exploring the iconic, seminal tools that some of us remember using in our early schooling. Things like the slide rule and protractor, the Bunsen burner and the planetarium.
Today we explore the simple, powerful tool that is still alive and well in some early learning classrooms: the wooden block. You might call it the anti-app.
Measurement. Balance. Math. Negotiation. Collaboration. And fun. The smooth maple pieces need no recharging, no downloading.
"Let's just put these blocks up," says 4-year-old Jacques. "I think this will probably work. Be careful, Corrine."
"I know," says Corinne, who is also 4.
With focused intensity, Jacques and Corinne work to balance and secure two semicircular wooden blocks atop two long, straight ones.
Whoa, careful, it's leaning!
The tower collapses to the carpeted floor at Stanford University's Bing Nursery School.
They work the problem.
It is Silicon Valley, after all. Fail early, fail often, kids. Iterate. Collaborate.
Jacques makes a pitch for stability.
"Corinne, I think if we just put a little on each side and used the right amount where mine was, it would work," he says. "OK?"
"OK, let's try," says Corrine. "OK!"
The tower grows.
Then, to paraphrase Homer, the tower falls thunderously and the blocks clatter about.
"It keeps falling down! Maybe a little higher," Jacques says, resisting the urge to lose patience.
The block party is on. Soon other kids wander over to try to help build this hour's great random structure.
"If we can't do it, we could build something else!"
"OK, what?"
Two blocks or four? Big or small? What shape? This is negotiation and collaboration, pre-K style.
"Those are the kinds of skills that we need later on," says Jennifer Winters, the Bing school's director. "We'll need to learn to work together on projects, to collaborate, to bounce ideas off one another."
Building A World