Spatial Language of Young Children During Block Play in Kindergartens in Urban China

Spatial language is an important predictor of spatial skills and might be inspired by peer interaction and goal-oriented building behaviors during block play. The present study investigated the frequency, type and level of children’s spatial language during block play and their associations with the level of block play by observing 228 young children in classrooms equipped with unit blocks and allowing free play on a daily basis. The findings showed that during block play, young children used more words about spatial locations, deictic terms, dimensions, and shapes and fewer words about spatial features or properties and spatial orientations or transformations. Spatial locations were used most frequently, and young children tended to use vertical location words to represent the corresponding location. Most young children used gestures in conjunction with spatial deictic terms. Among shape words, tetragon words were frequently used, and the representation of spatial shapes showed alternatives, collective tendencies and gender differences. The use of spatial language during the play process had a significant positive correlation with age, the construction structure, and form of block building.

The Modernist Picture Book in three Dimensions

This chapter explores the way modernist picture books reconceive three-dimensionality, and hence the book as object. Around 1900, a Europe-wide vogue for picture books (Gertrud Caspari, Andre Hellé) in which toys come to life overlapped with new enthusiasm for building block play (H. G. Wells and E. Nesbit advocate the construction of “little worlds”), toy-centered ballets, and the explorations of movement and perspective enabled by the advent first of cinema, and then of cubism. The essay also discusses 1920s and 1930s constructivist, cubist, and De Stijl picture books by Lou Loeber, Nathalie Parain, Alexander Rodchenko, and Varvara Stepanova in relationship to the emergence, in schools and art schools, of new art pedagogies centered on paper crafts, a new sense of the picture book itself as a template for future art-making, and of child readers as fledgling artists in their own right.

Spatial training using game play in preschoolers improves computational skills

Previous studies have found that block play results in better spatial ability which may lead to greater mathematical skills. The current study examined a specific type of block play, structured block play in which a copy of a block configuration is constructed. Structured block play is a difficult cognitive task that requires an understanding of spatial relations, hand-eye coordination, and spatial working memory among others. This preliminary study was designed to determine whether training using structure block play would lead to improvements in skills linked to mathematical thinking. Two groups of children participated in the study. One group played a competitive structured block building game once a week for 8 weeks. A control group was also tested. All participants completed a kindergarten readiness assessment before and after the 8-week period. Children in the block play group showed significant improvements in the computation module of the assessment. No such effect was observed for the control group. The results presented demonstrate that young children can, with assistance, engage in structured block play and that they have cognitive benefits from such block building activities.

Upaya Meningkatkan Kreativitas Membentuk Balok Bangunan Melalui Metode Praktik Langsung pada Anak Kelompok A TK Negeri Kabupaten Temanggung

Block play is the ability in constructive activities by building complex buildings using unit blocks that can improve the ability of eye and hand coordination, train fine motor skills, train children in problem solving, games that give children freedom of imagination, so that new things can created as a child's creativity a creative idea. The rationale for this improvement in learning is the lack of creativity in children. The purpose of this study are: 1) to know that through the direct practice method can increase creativity in forming building blocks in children, 2) to find out the magnitude of the increase in creativity in forming building blocks through direct practice methods in children Group A Kindergarten State Temanggung Regency Semester I 2016/2017 Academic Year. The subjects of this study were 15 students of Group A of TK Kindergarten in Temanggung Regency. Data collection methods used are observation, interviews, and documentation. The conclusion of this study is that playing building blocks has proven to be effective in increasing the creativity of children in Group A of Temanggung District Kindergarten 2016/2017 Academic Year. This is indicated by the achievement of completeness criteria in the classroom action research that has been carried out. Completeness of learning outcomes of children who get very good grades from Cycle I to Cycle II has increased by 60%, so that from the initial condition to Cycle II it has increased by 73.3%. In the performance indicators the researchers determined 80% of children could show their creativity, in Cycle II it had exceeded the expected target of 86.7% of children being able to show their creativity in creating a form using building blocks and telling the results of their work.