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In today's standards-driven climate, some teachers feel that incorporating content standards in the curriculum leads to a non-developmentally appropriate approach to working with young children (Coppie & Bredekamp 2008). In the work I do as a preschool teacher trainer, I show students how something as common as blocks can guide them through each of the curriculum content areas.
Children have played with blocks for centuries. In our own country, American mothers and teachers borrowed from German educator Friedrich Froebel's kindergarten methods (Beatty 1995), including Froebel's wooden ball, cylinder, cube, and other building blocks (Lascarides & Hinitz 2000). Decades later, NAEYCs founder, Patty Smith Hill, enlarged Froebel's blocks, believing that bigger sets would better develop children's physical skills. Caroline Pratt, founder of New York's City and Country School in 1914, soon designed unit blocks in standard sizes, accompanied by wooden figurines (Hewitt 2001).
These educators understood what we know today, that through handson play, children learn about spatial relationships and physical properties, develop social skills while building together and through requesting...