How To Teach Math To Children Using Legos or Building Blocks

What is “Block Play,” and How Does it Work?

Building blocks come in a plethora of colors, shapes, sizes, and materials. These are used to create, compose, or build things, allowing for an enjoyable, interactive experience.

Block play is a creative, open-ended, and beneficial play experience for all. It allows children to explore, dismantle, and reassemble any block-based structure they can think of.

Whether your child plays alone, with a friend, or in a small group, block play is inclusive and opens up new possibilities. Nothing makes you happier than to see your child having fun while playing.

Child Development and Block Play

Blocks can grow with your children as they progress through developmental stages. From stacking and knocking them over to building bridges and cages to complex building structures with a purpose, the possibilities are endless. As children go through the stages of block play, integrating blocks into role-playing is a natural evolution.

Children like taking on new challenges; for example, your toddler might say, “I’m going to build a tower in the sky.” 

Children seem to be engaged in block playing for hours. Why? Because there are always fresh, exciting, and interesting things to do with blocks.

Block Play’s Benefits

The advantages of block play are manifold. The skills that children acquire via block play are invaluable! The true value of block play, however, is that it provides children with sheer delight! Furthermore, they are completely unaware that they are learning. The advantages of early childhood building blocks often fall into one of five areas that are critical to raising happy, healthy, and well-adjusted children.

1. Fine Motor and Hand–Eye Coordination Practice

Fine motor abilities and perfect hand-eye coordination are required for stacking blocks on top of one another and fine-tuning a shaky tower. Reaching for, lifting, moving, and building with blocks strengthens children’s fingers, hands, and arms while also promoting spatial awareness and hand–eye coordination.

2. Imagination Growth

Blocks are classified as “open-ended toys,” meaning they can be used in various ways and combined with other toys.

Through block play, children embark on a voyage of discovery by pursuing their ideas or contributing to the design of their friends’ creations.

3. Problem-solving 

Blocks are an excellent tool for honing problem-solving and reasoning abilities. This can be intentional, with children trying actively to discover a solution, or it can happen naturally as a result of the play, as they learn firsthand what works and what doesn’t.

4. Social and Emotional Development 

Block play provides an opportunity to practice collaboration, problem-solving, turn-taking, sharing, and self-advocacy when working with other children. These skills take a long time to develop and are difficult for young children to master.

5. Math

Due to their sheer diversity of shapes, sizes, and colors, blocks provide ample opportunity for children to practice fundamental mathematical concepts such as measurement, number, symmetry, balance, and approximation.

Block play incorporates pattern recognition, symmetry, fractions, and linear measurement, all of which are math concepts.

6. Science

Children explore and understand many early science concepts while building with blocks. They become aware of weight, balance, and gravity, for example. They discover how a block reacts when placed on top of another by testing it with cause and effect. Using trial and error, they gradually learn how to balance the blocks and defy gravity.

Blocks: The Science of Construction Play

According to studies, children learn the most about physical forces when they have first-hand experience with them. So, if we want youngsters to acquire an intuitive understanding of mechanical forces like tension and compression, playing with blocks is a great place to start.

Building blocks are not only entertaining, but they are also beneficial to your child. Despite their apparent simplicity, blocks are possibly the most adaptable toy ever created.

Block construction encourages children to use their imaginations as well as their innate ingenuity.

The Stages of Block Play

Your child may be able to stack three blocks on top of each other between the ages of 18 and 24 months. Building a tower necessitates your kid lining up and balancing one block on top of the other, then releasing it at precisely the correct time to avoid it falling. Then comes the four-block tower, followed by a six-block one.

Children’s block play gets more creative and inventive as they age. They may begin constructing bridges, archways, tunnels, and more complex structures. They’ll also begin sorting the blocks and constructing roads, routes, and patterns. Your child may begin to narrate stories and play out situations from their life about what they’re making.

Since blocks appeal to children of all ages, they are ideal for mixed-age groups. They also provide an opportunity to put 21st-century abilities such as cooperation, problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication into practice. Teachers in early primary schools adore utilizing blocks in math, science, and even language arts and social studies programs.

Number and Simple Arithmetic Operations

Children may learn about numbers and quantity in a variety of ways by using blocks. With the use of blocks, all facets of mathematics learning can be made more enjoyable and relevant. Blocks play an important part in the learning and development of young children, from basic abilities to more advanced learning. 

Blocks are a terrific way to plan for and analyze early geometric play experiences by using blocks of various forms. By providing a variety of triangles, for example, youngsters may learn that all triangles have three sides and three points, regardless of their size. Other physical models of simple solid forms, such as cubes, cones, spheres, rectangular prisms, and triangular prisms, can be provided to allow for the exploration of a wider range of shapes.

Isn’t it wonderful how something as simple as a block set can benefit your child’s brain? There is a reason why blocks have lasted so long: they provide benefits that other toys don’t.

All areas of mathematical learning can be meaningful and fun with the use of blocks. From beginning to advanced learning, blocks play an integral role in the learning and development of young children. Remember to use leading questions to guide children’s learning and to think aloud to stimulate their minds.

If you want to read more such blogs, go to BYJU’S FutureSchool blogs. Let us know what you think about math and Legos in the comments section below.

WEB REF:
https://www.teachearlyyears.com/learning-and-development/view/the-benefits-of-block-play

https://discoverybuildingsets.com/blogs/dbs-articles/block-play