Ramping Up
By Mark Mabry, Head Teacher
The unit blocks surrounding our indoor carpet area and the hollow blocks on our patio present children with similar conceptual and constructive challenges, but on very different scales. The basic unit block is solid maple and measures 5 1/2 inches long by 2 3/4 inches wide by 1 3/8 inches deep; all other pieces are geometrically related to this basic unit’s length. Hollow blocks are larger and, as the name implies, are constructed as open pieces. The basic, four-sided hollow block measures 11inches long by 11 inches wide by 5 1/2 inches deep, with similar relationships between the lengths of the pieces. With both sets of materials, children experiment with notions of geometric and spatial relationships, stability and balance and symbolic representation. The essential quality of these building materials is their mathematical relationships with each other: the “unit”-based measurements of halves, doubles and quadruples provide opportunities for developing a fluency with math, geometry and physics through play. The collaborative nature of block-building develops language and social skills. Balance and collapse teach both the nature of gravity and the value of experimentation and persistence. While block-building with unit blocks tends toward the representation of “scale model” ideas, hollow block constructions often inspire “inhabitable” and “actionable” ideas. Children often build structures to play in or on, such as offices, helicopters and castles.
Near the end of the last school year, we saw a core group of our soon-to-be kindergarteners develop an affinity for building with hollow-block ramps. In particular, they kept coming back to the problem of building an extended ramp that they could actually use as an incline for climbing up or sliding down. Through trial and error, they mastered how to successively stack the ramp blocks in higher iterations to produce an extensive slide. While they enjoyed using their creations themselves, they were especially happy to invite others to try out their constructions.
Exploring the properties of ramps on a different scale with unit blocks indoors.
At the beginning of the subsequent school year, some children, inspired by their recollections of block play with their older peers, tried to recreate these ramp ideas with the hollow blocks. As is typical in a classroom community, the seeds of an idea are planted by a small group of children, but their endeavors often pique others’ interest and take root as a “big idea,” playable and revisited by many participants.
One morning two children started building a series of steps with a teacher’s assistance and supervision that rose above their heads. (For safety reasons, typically children are guided not to build above their shoulders. When they do, teachers are there to carefully supervise and support.) Once they reached what they determined was an apex of appropriate height, they began to brainstorm about how they could then make a slide or ramp to return to the ground. Whereas they seemed to have mastered the concept of adding one more horizontal block for each iteration of a series of rising steps, they seemed somewhat stymied about how to use the ramp blocks to create the descent they desired.
They had figured out that stacking rectangular blocks to make a set of steps works by placing one additional block atop each adjacent stack. Their first attempts at creating their slide were based on extending this idea: If steps were constructed using stacks of flat blocks, shouldn’t a large ramp be likewise constructed using the ramp blocks? Interestingly, simultaneous to these children trying to solve this conundrum with the hollow blocks on the patio, another child was independently exploring similar spatial questions with unit blocks inside the classroom.
After watching them try different unsuccessful strategies for a while, a teacher picked up one of the ramp blocks and said, “Show me where you want this to be to start your slide.” One child pointed to a space in midair adjacent to the top step. The teacher then posed the question, “So how can you get this block to stay up here?” and after a cogent pause, both children excitedly began using flat blocks to build a platform to support the ramp in the desired place. The teacher and children repeated this back-and-forth interaction for the next couple of ramp placements and then the children independently completed the rest of the slide to the ground.
One of the most important geometric properties of the hollow blocks is that their relationships to each other allow for different configurations of blocks to span an identical space. Blocks of some sizes grew scarce, which spurred the children to generate architectural ideas that seemed more efficient. For example, they started using more half-size blocks to create the support towers because they had already employed the majority of the basic square blocks in the stair construction. They also discovered that they could span the space from the ground to the ramps using fewer blocks if they oriented the blocks vertically rather than horizontally.
One might have expected that children who had invested so much time and effort into realizing their vision to be somewhat protective of the resulting construction. But on the contrary, the children’s “pride of ownership” quickly turned into a desire to share their invention with others. When curious children arrived on the scene, they were invited to try out the slide. The builders were excited to show others how it worked and to provide “tips” and safety instructions for its use. In doing so, they also ignited a spark for the classroom community to continue exploring these building ideas over the next few weeks.
In latter days, when some of the original slide constructors returned to the hollow blocks, they were inspired to take their building to new levels—quite literally. Not only did they want to try to build their slide higher, they also wanted to add more complexity to their structures. And they found a lot of help in doing so. They had built an enthusiastic group of collaborators by sharing their invention earlier. Because of the blocks’ relatively large size, building projects can span large distances, which often creates opportunities for children to work on a variety of ideas on different parts of a structure. In one of the ensuing slide constructions, a second set of perpendicular stairs arose to accommodate the increased traffic to the summit. One day a ticket booth attached to the stairs appeared.
As the children built the slides higher, they also built them longer, which meant they often encountered obstacles to work around. When a slide ended at the very edge of another group’s nearby “ice castle” block construction, the slide builders consulted among themselves and decided to add a 90-degree turn at the slide’s base to avoid it. Solving that problem led in turn to a new goal: to prolong the sliding experience as far as possible, even after descending to the ground. It soon became de rigueur to extend the slide along the ground, passing under a low table on the patio where children would have to duck down low as they pulled or pushed themselves along the blocks, squeezing under the table. On one occasion, the children continued the path of blocks over the agapanthus plants that border the patio, and were overheard discussing how to surmount the next obstacle—the fence dividing East and Center room!
Several months later, children recreated the slide structure as a ski slope, using flat boards as “skis” on which to masterfully and rather artfully descend.
What motivated these children to work so hard and persistently at figuring out how to bring their various ideas to fruition? What kept them coming back, building upon their earlier experiences? What inspired new collaborators and experienced hands to see this play as worthy of collaboration, negotiation and effort?
While engaged in these hollow-block experiences, the children encountered challenges, problems and opportunities for negotiating ideas that were intrinsically meaningful to them. They were driven by desires to build something bigger than themselves, to realize a lofty goal, to feel pride and satisfaction in their accomplishments, to build something both useful and fun by themselves—for themselves and others. Or as put more eloquently in their own words: “We want to make a big slide to go down!”