See What Children Know
When children intentionally create block structures they are, in effect, making statements about the spatial relations among the blocks. On top, next to, between, and covering are some of the relations that block structures can represent. We might want to give the structures names, like arch, row, or stack; but we can understand the stages of block building better if we think about the relation between one block and another. Near-but-not-touching (a gap) is more complicated than touching (a row). We can reason that the near-but-not-touching is more complex than touching, the same way an aborted kiss is an action on an action and a kiss is simply that action executed.
Part I of The Language of Blocks covers the most elementary structures: the stack, the row, and the arch. Listen to the narrator (George Forman) explain how children “speak” spatial relations with blocks and also how children “read” a lone block on the table in different ways; sometimes as “coming up from the table,” sometimes as “the beginning of a horizontal extension.” These different “readings” of the lone block cause the child to complete the “sentence” with different endings, to wit: a stack, a row or an arch. Click here to watch this narrated clip in our streaming video library. You will notice that this video clip has an adult demonstrating the stages of block building rather than video segments of actual children. We thought you might appreciate a more condensed presentation of these stages. Please let us know what you think of this format. Of course we will continue to add to our library video of authentic actions of children at play.
Notes from the Field
In 2001, the videative was born as a combination of video and text, that is video + narrative = videative. In 2008, enter the vook, a combination of video + book. Vook.com has taken well-written books and enhanced them with video clips as eBooks that can be viewed on desktop and laptop computers, as well as mobile devices, such as the iPad and iPhone. One of the most relevant examples from Vook.com is the video enhanced version of Ellen Galinsky’s book, Mind in the Making. Check it out. We would like to know if a video enhanced eBook appeals to you, as compared to a large video library with short clips that you can mix and match on your own. You may remember several years ago we initiated the “Textbook Helper” service that would add our video clips to the textbooks you use. We are still interested in this format but would like opinions from you, our readers.
Announcement: Within the next few weeks, www.videatives.com will have a new look. We have listened to you in order to improve the site’s ease of use.
I love Ellen Galinsky’s new Vook, Mind in the Making. I’d read her Six Stages of Parenthood several years ago and really enjoyed her style of writing. What I love about this particular vook is how she incorporates researchers’ work into video…I will admit that when reading “serious” professional texts, I get very bogged down with research details and find myself skipping over parts. I really appreciate resources such as Mind in the Making and Videatives because they do pair images with text. So many of us need to “see” concepts in action and Mind in the Making does that (as does this language of blocks clip). I think there is room for both e-book style resources and short clips.
I’ve completed Mind in the Making part 1 vook and am in process of watching part 2. I highly recommend it and plan on sharing the program’s “Daily Kid” and blog with the parents in our program.
Thank you for the block video! My staff team watched it and it was really interesting to all of us, and also offered clear examples of how we can talk to parents about what is happening in the classroom block area. (I’m looking forward to installment two.)
But I must admit, without the child examples, the piece was missing something. I enjoy the child videos with commentary far more – I may have learned more in this one. . .but I enjoy the children’s work more.