The Language of Blocks
in the earliest stages of play
A L’Shana Tova to those who recently celebrated the Jewish New Year and welcome back to Block Land. I was so happy to hear from some of you how much you enjoyed the previous post I shared, especially the videos! I hope to be able to continue sharing useful and easily digestible content in many different forms—just as our kids need multimodal forms of learning, so do we!
So where was I? Ahh yes, playing with blocks. Yes, I’m…still obsessed with blocks. This time around I want to focus on some of the concepts your child is learning while building with blocks, especially in those early developmental stages where you may be thinking to yourself, “am I really doing anything?” The short answer is yes, because in this early stage of play and language development, children are exploring and attempting to figure out why objects move a certain way, make certain sounds, change shape, change color, and grow or shrink. They typically do so through repeating the same idea over and over and over and over…and over again. Because WHAT IF I DO THIS THING ONE MORE TIME AND THE RESULT IS DIFFERENT??
Sound familiar? Yup, we do this as adults too.
But anyway, an 18 month old could stack three blocks together and watch them fall down 525,600 times to figure out the function of those blocks. Understanding the functions of objects is a hallmark developmental milestone that combines the child’s ability to identify an object with the actions it can carry out. Typically as a speech pathologist when focusing on comprehension during an evaluation, I’m looking to see at the very least if a child demonstrates the understanding of an object’s basic functions. For instance, that scissors are used to “cut” or a wheel “spins” within a related and expected context, like art projects or playing with cars respectively. What I love about working with all children, but especially neurodivergent individuals, is that they see functions for objects that a neurotypical person would not. Their creativity and ability to think beyond the formulaic, expected answer is so inspiring, and a huge part of why I love block building as an intervention.
Below you will find some ways to include language concepts typically associated with blocks and building into play. Since you will be engaging in open-ended play with your child, who may have their own unique and marvelous ideas, I encourage you to use the following concepts as a jumping off point while always leaning into what your child finds interesting. This is not a checklist. These are not concepts your child needs to master 100% by a certain milestone. They are simply common ones that will probably come up at some point when playing with blocks that I think are easiest to model across a variety of ideas.
Focus on: Concepts of space and time
Example spatial concepts: on/off, in/out, top/bottom, over/under, middle/on the side
Example temporal concepts: first/then/last, before/after, almost, soon, now
Let’s go back to the example of building a tower, and think about what is happening at the most basic, concrete capacity. Blocks are being stacked, one on top of another, in a sequence. Innately kids (should be) picking up on the patterns of the blocks and how they move in space, but in order to understand that words like “on” and “off” are tied to those visual patterns and movements, they need language modeling from you. Same with concepts of time, like “first” and “then” or counting.
In these moments, comment and narrate instead of asking questions. Many of us may model language by asking, “should we put the red block on first?” while placing the block on top. This can get confusing, since you’re not really giving them the opportunity to respond and you’re already putting the block on the tower. Instead, narrate your actions by saying, “Here comes the red block on top of the blue block!” or comment on their actions, like, “Wow [child’s name], first you put the red block on, then the blue block. Look how tall it’s getting!”
Focus on: Actions
Modeling actions while playing with blocks can seem very basic—build, stack, and fall may quickly come to mind. Although repetition of familiar words is highly important to learning at this stage, a motivating interaction like building is also a wonderful opportunity to introduce more complex vocabulary over time through the use of synonyms. Maybe in one moment you’re modeling the word “fall” and in the next turn you can introduce a novel, more abstract word like, “topple.”
Additionally, if you speak multiple languages at home, this type of game is a natural opportunity to code switch between those languages. My recommendation, which is based on the thorough bilingual language development research that has been done over the last few decades, is to begin with the language you are most comfortable speaking. Someone in my professional life refers to this as “The Language of Love.” Then, you can intermix terms from the other languages you speak into these same scenarios.
This applies to cultural dialects, colloquialisms, slang, and any cultural terminology as well. For instance, my family integrated Yiddish1 terms into conversation growing up that I didn’t even know had English equivalents until I was a teenager, like the fact that “polkey” means thigh. I legitimately thought everyone called chicken thighs polkies for a good chunk of my life! So if you and your family utilize these types of terms in everyday conversation, incorporate them into play!
Focus on: Scaffolding Predictions and Inferencing
Linking back to the sequencing concepts mentioned above, in order to predict future events and make inferences, we have to understand basic concepts of time and cause-effect relationships. As early as a few months old, we are starting to scaffold these moments for children.
Imagine you’re outside and you see a bird. Something you may say as you point up to the bird in the sky is, “Look the bird is flying. I wonder where it’s going?” These “I wonder” moments shift the child’s focus beyond the “here and now” and into the world of imagination. So when we’re playing with blocks and we’ve made a really tall tower, and the tower becomes unsteady, an opportunity emerges to slowly comment, “Oh no…the tower is shaking! I wonder what’s going to happen when the next block goes on top. Is it going to fall???” Even breaking down this statement, look at all of those enriching descriptors: shaking (action), next (time), top (space), fall (action). So much vocabulary in one short idea!
Allow time for your child to process this hypothetical thought through shifting their eye gaze between the block you are holding and the wobbling tower. They’re building2 a cause/effect connection between the visual and auditory information. Responding with an answer is not necessarily the goal, but instead you’re giving them a moment to think about the possibilities.
Next up: Let’s talk about what block play looks like for school-aged children.
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Yes, I am aware that Yiddish is a language. Although I am not a fluent speaker of Yiddish, its use is fully intermingled into my cultural identity.
Dear reader this truly was not a pun intended moment, but upon reading it back during the editing phase, I couldn’t help but keep it in there. I mean come onnnnn