Manipulatives: Tools for Active Learning
by Barbara Backer, M.Ed.
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"Hey, Kendra, come over here!" five-year-old Kyle calls from the block area. "Let's pretend we're police. You build the jail over there, and I'll make the bank here. Pretend this is our police car. We can catch the robbers and put 'em in jail." Kyle begins making siren sounds as he pulls blocks off the shelf. Kendra arranges pillars on end, enclosing a circular space. "No! You can't do it that way," wails Ali. "A jail can't be a circle. Watch me." Ali encloses a rectangular shape with pillars as she joins in the play. Kendra builds a rectangular shape beside Ali's. Jessie, a developmentally delayed four-year-old, takes a large number of plastic interlocking blocks (e.g., DUPLO, FlexiBlocks, Mobilo, Combi Blocks) from their dish pan container and puts them into a cloth bag. He drags the bag across the room and dumps the contents into a pile on the floor. He retraces his steps and repeats the action. Next, he fills a small wagon with the interlocking blocks from the growing pile. He rolls the wagon back to his original starting place and dumps the cargo into the dish pan. Four-year-old Danita, draped in colorful scarves, and three-year-old José, wearing two bow ties clipped to his knit shirt, traipse from the dramatic play area to the manipulative area. She carries a pocketbook; he holds a lunch box. They fill both with small, plastic, snap-together blocks and return to the dramatic play area where they use the blocks as money and food. Back in the block area four-year-old Naoto builds two rectangular buildings a few feet apart. Then he stands pillars on end to make a vertical path between the buildings. He gingerly lays rectangular blocks on top of the pillars to create an elaborate, elevated walk-way between the buildings. He balances wooden figurines on top of the walkway.
Carmen, age three, has taken triangular blocks to a table in the manipulative area. She sings out, "Up, down, up, down," as she lays the blocks on their sides; she arranges their points in alternating directions to form a pattern. On the floor beside her, five-year-old Joseph has built a giant structure. "Look at my picky (picket) fence," he says to Carmen, as he arranges triangular blocks, with points up, around the structure. Anson and Tamar experiment at the water table placing plastic people, animals, and other precious cargo on floating bristle blocks.
Active Learning
A look at this group of children shows how active and energetic children can be. In 1974, J. L. Hymes said, "Young children are not good sitters. They are hungry for stimulation. They want to see, touch, taste, sniff, handle, and use materials. They want to test things out for themselves" (pp. 37, 44-45). Children learn best when they are encouraged to explore, interact, create, and play (Thompkins, 1991). In fact, research confirms what most early childhood professionals already know-children learn the most when they are actively participating in the learning process (Katz, 1994).
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