Playing With Blocks May Help Children's Spatial And Math Thinking
Saturday, September 28, 2013 - 18:50
in Health & Medicine
Instead of letting them mess around on the Wii or, worse, watching a "Baby Einstein" video, the way to make kids of all ages and incomes smarter could be as simple as handing them a few blocks. Playing with blocks may help preschoolers develop the kinds of skills that support later learning in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), according to a new study. More than a hundred 3-year-olds of various socioeconomic levels took part in the study. Children who were better at copying block structures were also better at early math, the study found. Among the skills tested were whether children could figure out that a block belongs above or below another block and whether they aligned the pieces. read more