Theory In Action Project- Activity #1: Block Play. Education Essay

THEORY IN ACTION PROJECT- Activity #1: Block Play
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The block play based on observation of a 4-year old boy who builds blocks alone and then there is support of the block play. By the age of 3, children are able to design the space and acquire an idea of ​​3-dimensionality, and partly depending on age and creativity, they can complete scenarios where they use blocks to create structures. The task in block play involves creating various blocks where experience skill and patience, are required to build more complex blocks. To achieve this, the child begins by making the basic shapes, and he is observant as he notes the dimension of the blocks and how they can fit each other. Children tend to stack the blocks independently and collectively, and observing how the child plays provided insights on how the child is able to build structure focusing on the components of stage complexity, arch complexity and dimensionality complexity.
The game with building blocks delights children of all ages and gives them an opportunity to build colorful towers and constructions of all kinds. Observation of the child’s block play activities provide insights on his way of thinking and can be helpful to improve his cognitive thinking ability (Gregory et al., 2003). For instance, the block play was beneficial to be used to learn classifications by colors, shapes or sizes and logical series where this promotes cognitive reasoning and may help develop imagination and creativity. There were few distractions in the environment and the child was concentrating on the task when working alone and when being closely observed.
The stage complexity dimension is a phase of investigating the objects, where they learn to differentiate them by size, by color and to relate them to each other. There is more focus on stacking the blocks unlike cases where they also knock them downs the assembling and creating structures improve. At the basic level the child makes rows and towers using blocks of similar size and mostly similar colors, and he is able to manipulate the pieces into different structures after various trials. According to Gregory, Kim, Sook, & Whiren (2003), the constructive and manipulative ability of the children reflect better organization over time, and the children may carry the blocks and make basic block constructions such as rows or stacks.
In the first session, the child exhibits good organization, planning and flexibility in stage complexity by making towers and post, and introduces more complex features in the second session. The block building game not only facilitates the understanding and use of spatial concepts, but also gradually developing the ability to represent, analyzes and manipulate objects mentally. The blocks can also be integrated into learning games, where mathematical relationships can be easily visualized and physical relationships of the exercise can be determined. Blocks are used to build different relationships in a structure, and when here and in my role as a participant-observer, I highlighted symmetry or proportion, which may help to acquire somewhat more complex concepts when creating structures, but it is the child takes the initiative to incorporate feedback.
The block playing exercise, allowed the child to set a goal, and plan how they will make their next creation, including using previous structures for the new structure. When I am a participant and observer child focused more on possible consequences of their next steps, which reflects reasoning and problem solving. The set of cognitive processes involved in reasoning, and in solving problems including changing situations including anticipation, making choices, planning, behavior selection, self-monitoring, self-regulation and feedback. Being an observer who comments, guides and gives feedback enhances goal achievement through better organization and planning than if the child plays alone with no input from an adult participant.
The child builds what he imagines and observes, and at four to five years, the child has developed the spatial arrangement ability including the ability to build arches and rows of arches to start playing with the building blocks, children need to manipulate the blocks in whatever way possible including placing them on top of each other, touching the blocks and stacking the blocks. Different parts are integrated to form a whole structure block building strategies is associated with cognitive skills and this allows the child to build arches and bridges (Gregory et al., 2003). While the capacity to build complex statures evolves as the children matures, the environment influences how they use the block building skills and make structures of more hierarchical complexity.
The child arranges multiple blocks on top of each other and creates arches, and the arches reflect the complexity of the structure when an adult is present as the arches were combined. There is better integration of visual, motor and spatial skills in the second session as an adult guides the child and provides feedback. Accuracy and complexity are often used to evaluate the block construction abilities where children are tasked with reproducing models (Gregory et al., 2003). The combination of various abilities makes it easier to create mind maps and integrate elements into an organized whole. All games that pose a challenge and children solve the challenges creatively to make more complex structures in block play.
When building structure children learn everything related to organization and spatial awareness there are concepts such as size, shape front, behind, left, right, left, up and down. The challenges is to solve the problem of budding a model using the blocks provided in whatever way possible, and in the second session, the child responded to suggestions by making structures with more dimensions in the second session. In object play the different blocks can form one or more dimensions depending on the choices made (Bruner, 1983). In the first session, the child focused more on one and two dimensions, and as he recognized the importance of patterns and spacing, he can build up on this to represent the same blocks in differe...