Study Finds Playing With Blocks Helps Language Skills

Yahoo! News:  Playing with blocks helps young children gain language skills, a small study concluded on Monday.

After six months, language scores among half of 175 children aged 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 who were sent plastic blocks were 15 percent higher than a matched group that did not receive the free blocks, according to the study by researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Parents were given ideas about how to help their children play with the blocks, then kept diaries of their children’s activities over four days. Finally, all the parents filled out questionnaires that assessed their child’s vocabulary, grammar, and other language abilities.

 

Study author Dimitri Christakis, writing in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, said unstructured play with blocks stimulates thinking, memory and physical mastery of objects at a time when a child’s brain is growing rapidly.

“They are the precursors of thought and language,” he wrote of the skills learned from manipulating blocks. “Older children begin to make up stories or scripts for these objects …”

Such play may also substitute for less stimulating activities such as watching television, he said, adding parents ought to be skeptical of some toy-makers’ claims.

“An increasing number of media-based products are making unsubstantiated claims that they can make children smarter, more literate, and more musical,” Christakis wrote.

The study was funded by Mega Bloks, owned by Montreal-based toy maker MEGA Brands Inc.

Fun blocks:

Start with some basic larger blocks for babies: These minimalist black-and-white blocks  or these beautiful embossed alphabet blocks that come in German, Hebrew, Spanish, French, and sign-language versions.

Basic wooden blocks can be very expensive new, but there are lots to be found on Ebay.

Big manufactures make some cheaper options, like the 50-piece Natural Brio blocks for about $18, or these multi-colored 200-piece wooden blocks (with tote!) for $20.   Personally, if they’re going to be all over the living room floor, I’d go with the natural.

If you’re adding on, these Plan toys water blocks are great,  as are the architectural building blocks from  Haba in Japanese Pagoda, U.S. Capitol Building, Pyramid, Coliseum, Russian, and Romantic Church styles.

Travel blocks:Nonchalantmom sells Muji’s “Suburbia in a bag” — ironic blocks in a cotton drawstring bag.

A block-family toy for older kids: MagnaTiles

Children’s Toys Inappropriate For Children

I really dislike the excess of pink and primary-colored plastic schlock that fills up most playrooms and toy bins. I understand why so much plastic is used in places like the church nursery — it’s easy to sanitize, and that’s important. But I would much rather buy a few nice not-made-in-China wooden toys and cloth dolls than piles and piles and piles of Playskool junk. Kids like kitchen items and empty boxes best anyway.

Of course, I irrationally make a distinction between retro-cool plastic toys like I played with (Glow Worms, the old Fisherprice Little People castle, Mr. Potato Head) and the current flock of Elmo/Dora/Bob-the-Builder/Spongebob/Backadigans/Wiggles crapola.

But as the New York Times reported, today’s Polly Pocket Lip Gloss Studio Playsets and really are inappropriate for kids: