We all played with building blocks, no? Frank Lloyd Wright credited Froebel Gifts, a type of building block, as being instrumental in his early development "For several years I sat at the little Kindergarten table-top... and played... with the cube, the sphere and the triangle—these smooth wooden maple blocks... All are in my fingers to this day..."
Anyway, here is a study summary that may be of interest.
"Building Blocks is a NSF-funded PreK to grade 2 software-based mathematics curriculum
development project, designed to comprehensively address the most recent mathematics standards. Building
Blocks materials were created upon explicit design principles and a nine-phase formative model—they are
truly research-based (details are provided in Clements, 2002a; Clements, 2002b; Sarama & Clements, in
press)... The materials are designed to help children extend and mathematize their everyday activities, from building blocks to art to songs and stories to puzzles...
...The results are illustrated in two graphs. We computed effect sizes using the accepted benchmarks of
.25 as indicating practical significance (i.e., educationally meaningful), .5 as indicating moderate strength,
and .8 as indicating a large effect (Cohen, 1977). The effect sizes comparing BB children’s posttest to the
control children’s posttest were .85 and 1.44 for number and geometry, respectively, and the effect sizes
comparing BB children’s posttest to their pretest (measuring achievement gains) were 1.71 and 2.12.
Therefore, all effects were positive and large. Achievement gains were comparable to the coveted “2-sigma”
effect of excellent individual tutoring"
> We all played with building blocks, no? Frank Lloyd Wright credited Froebel Gifts, a type of building block, as being instrumental in his early development
We've all played with building blocks, but few of us are Frank Lloyd Wright. Of course, the difference here is that he played with them for several years whereas I'm told I played with them but can form no crisp memories of such an event. (I don't have many crisp memories from that age and I'm cautious of vague memories without additional witnesses just being made-up.) I don't imagine I would have enjoyed being forced to play with them up through 6th grade, nor have been more Frankish, so I'm finding it hard to believe him that it was the blocks themselves that made Frank different. (Though after a little reflection, I do remember extensions to building blocks through maybe 6th grade, such as the rubber band pegs, various polygon plastic 'biscuits'[1], plastic-log-cabin-building cylinders, and connectible cubes. As well as 2D jigsaw puzzles at home and we had a couple neat 3D puzzles in 6th grade. I never liked Lego but I like Minecraft.)
[1]Actually, apparently these things are the 2D "building blocks" referenced in the study whereas Frank seems to be talking about the 3D "building blocks" that are actually big and blocky.
Anyway, here is a study summary that may be of interest.
http://gse.buffalo.edu/org/buildingblocks/writings/Building%...
"Building Blocks is a NSF-funded PreK to grade 2 software-based mathematics curriculum development project, designed to comprehensively address the most recent mathematics standards. Building Blocks materials were created upon explicit design principles and a nine-phase formative model—they are truly research-based (details are provided in Clements, 2002a; Clements, 2002b; Sarama & Clements, in press)... The materials are designed to help children extend and mathematize their everyday activities, from building blocks to art to songs and stories to puzzles...
...The results are illustrated in two graphs. We computed effect sizes using the accepted benchmarks of .25 as indicating practical significance (i.e., educationally meaningful), .5 as indicating moderate strength, and .8 as indicating a large effect (Cohen, 1977). The effect sizes comparing BB children’s posttest to the control children’s posttest were .85 and 1.44 for number and geometry, respectively, and the effect sizes comparing BB children’s posttest to their pretest (measuring achievement gains) were 1.71 and 2.12. Therefore, all effects were positive and large. Achievement gains were comparable to the coveted “2-sigma” effect of excellent individual tutoring"