Let’s consider these examples of block play that supports STEM:
Loretta is 5 months old and is exploring a square blue block.
She turns it around in her hands and transfers it back and forth, exploring it with wide eyes before bringing it to her mouth. Her teacher trades the square blue block for a rectangular red one. Loretta begins the process of exploring this block by turning it around in her hands, transferring it back and forth and then bringing it to her mouth.
Jude is 10 months old and is playing with big foam blocks in the infant classroom.
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He is picking blocks up and stacking them two at a time. He notices a group of several blocks that are different shapes, so he crawls to them. Upon his arrival he sits and picks the blocks up one at a time to investigate them. He stacks two of them and then tries to stack two more but quickly learns that they do not stack as well as he had hoped. He returns to the first set of blocks and continues playing. His teacher brings the other blocks over to Jude and encourages him to use them in his block play.
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24 month old Shavante is putting blocks into a basket and taking them back out. She puts big blocks together and leaves smaller blocks out. Her teacher provides her with a smaller basket for the smaller blocks and invites Shavante to put the small blocks inside of it. Her teacher encourages her and asks her to switch baskets next time. When the big blocks cannot all fit in the smaller basket the teacher asks Shavante if they can fit and how she can make them fit. Shavante tries to make them fit by arranging them differently but still cannot make it work. She goes back to putting the big blocks in the big basket and small blocks in the small basket. |