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Kids Can Swipe a Screen But Can't Use LEGOs
SpankiMonki sends this news from The Guardian:
"Children are arriving at nursery school able to 'swipe a screen' but lack the manipulative skills to play with building blocks, teachers have warned. They fear that children are being given tablets to use 'as a replacement for contact time with the parent' and say such habits are hindering progress at school. Addressing the Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference in Manchester on Tuesday, Colin Kinney said excessive use of technology damages concentration and causes behavioural problems such as irritability and a lack of control."
$40 for a set you build one time that takes an hour or so
Having skill at playing with building blocks is not useful to most modern jobs. I'm sure the children are not great at milking cows either.
Kinesthetic learners are failed by touchscreens too. We're raising a new generation of latchkey kids.
I won't let them use a computer until they are 5.
They they'll get taken away by CPS.
geez, when I was a kid we had to play around with the chemicals under the sink for entertainment ..
Most parents today are horrible. They do NOT interact with the chile like laying on the floor and playing with them. Get your asses off the couch and lie on the floor playing with your kids showing them how to stack blocks, and play.
I gave my daughter a earfull having my granddaughter use the ipad at 2 to keep her entertained. No you play with her using physical objects, and interaction.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You left out the thing that belongs to a lego.
Building Blocks simply means any number of a variety of blocks, most notably wooden building blocks.
LEGOs are a trademarked branded construction toy that goes together in a very specific way.
The point of this is that it's about physical dexterity.
This article does not reference Lego.
LEGO bricks are so expensive because of the extremely tight tolerances needed for them to fit together properly- 0.002mm. They are most definitely not a rip-off. You do have a point about the one-time thing, however.
It all comes down to being a responsible parent. If some of these people are handing them a tablet to babysit the kid, well yea, that's all they're going to know how to do. However, if the parents actually spend some time with their kids and do other things with them, there shouldn't be a problem. Let the kids use the tools and tech that is there for what they are : tools.
I'd also say that a tablet is better than just TV. Wouldn't you?
Lego isn't an acronym, so why capitalize it? It's an uncountable noun, so why pluralize it?
Because you're THICK, that's why.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
did they say swipe or wipe?
and I'm very pleased that she does, they are the big blocks and she also has a mega blocks set. I belive she can swipe to unlock my phone but she tends to hit the emergency call button first since I a passcode to unlock set up.
Just a quick anacdote, I was surprised when I saw my friend's daughter sit in front of an iPad totally engrossed and playing a game, she's a month younger than my daughter and my littler girl would never sit still long enough to do something like that, even the simple bubble popping apps don't keep her attention (granted it's been at least 5 months since we've tried). I don't think it's a bad thing either way just one child is calmer and more focused while mine tends to be a slobbering hell beast bent on destruction :)
Exposing children to new technology is a terrible idea.
An Egyptian legend relates that when the god Thoth revealed his invention of writing to King Thamos, the good King denounced it as the enemy of civilization. "Children and young people," protested the monarch, "who had hitherto been forced to apply themselves diligently to learn and retain whatever was taught them would cease to apply themselves and would neglect to exercise their memories."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Mine do both. No reason not to. And they're girls. I teach them about tools as well as dolls.
We didn't give a tablet until age 4, for a very long car trip is what started it. They don't get it every day. Usually once or twice a week, and we limit it to 30 minutes. Sometimes an hour if it's a non school day.
But my daughter love's lego friends. And my son is huge into super heros/star wars lego's. Yes they are expensive, but we find sales usually.
I find it's about all around letting them do things. Out side play. Some kinect for bowling once in awhile instead of tablet time. Studying/reading/walking/biking. Just letting them go in my parents back yard for a few hours of "unsupervised" play (can see from deck/indoors).
My kids are now 5 and 7, K and 2nd. As soon as they start school they are on computers, touchscreens, tablets, etc. They have this white board thing. My daughter can pick up any electronic device and just know, faster then my wife. She's shown my wife how to operate the plex/chromecast device when my wife was first learning.
I don't necessarily see tablets/touchscreens as a bad thing, as long as in moderation. But esp since they are using it in school almost right away.
Children today are retarded - physically, mentally, and emotionally, and they come from retarded parents.
The situation is going to get worse, not better, despite how many PSAs or "First Five" programs you trot out.
It takes a village to raise a child, but parents don't trust the village so they try to do it all themselves.
Then they realize it's too much fucking work for 2 people, 2 people who both need to keep their jobs, 1 person (since single parents are more common than not), or 1 person who's working a full-time job (or two). So the kids get plopped in front of the TV, a tablet, etc. and vegetate. Outside is dangerous, so kids don't play, they Google Play and get fat. When they enter school, the state becomes the sitter. Education and social interaction are to be avoided - the goals here are to not get sued and to try and make money off of attendance records and performance on standardized tests.
There are only 3 simple steps to solving this:
1: Stop having kids you when you can't handle kids (financially, mentally, temporally).
2: Stop having kids with people when you aren't both committed.
3: Stop wasting time coddling the broken kids in school - leave them behind in the bad schools and dumb classes and let decent kids get an education based on learning, not on administration.
Of course, none of this will happen because it involves people taking responsibility for themselves and their kids.
What happened to playing with matches?
What do they mean by that exactly?
My feeling is... Playing around more in the "physical world" would give kids a better feel for different materials and objects, how they bend, break, etc. Playing around more in an abstract virtual world does not allow the kids to develop the same feel for materials, but on the other hand, does not limit them in the same way the physical world would do.
I guess, what goes around comes around. I'd vote for a healthy balance between "swiping screens" and playing with physical legos.
It takes far less motor coordination to "swipe a screen" (especially since most tablets that don't have a special unlock method like a password or pattern input will treat pretty much any touch on the screen as a "swipe" necessary to unlock it) than it does to put together Lego or other building blocks correctly. It also takes a considerable amount of strength to take them apart if you need to move the pieces. It's just as likely that the kids simply don't have the motor skills developed yet to use the blocks that it is the tablets are doing some kind of evil technology voodoo magic to make them bad at blocks, as some of these teachers seem to be suggesting.
The social aspects are wrong as well. For a lot of people, smartphones and tablets ARE a means of social contact - I bring my tablet to work all the time so I can IM my friends during my lunch break. Just because they're not talking to each other the way people did when I was a kid (mid-90s) doesn't mean they're not talking. Heck, I can remember spending recess as a kid doing pokemon battles and magic the gathering games, which I bet would look just as odd to these people if they were teaching in the 90s.
Then you've got some guy complaining that his students can't memorize lines for a play because information is too easy to archive. If he knew anything about anthropology, he'd know that's what separates modern man from cavemen - we can write down information and recall it later. In the words of SMBC, we don't need to store the fact that biggest meat is best meat in our brains because we can write it down and consult a book to find out which meat is best meat. What it sounds like this guy has is a bunch of young kids and a really boring play he had to force himself to memorize.
TL;DR, kids go for things that are interesting. They're not like adults who can force themselves to do the most mundane of tasks (hell, look at me doing data entry 8 hours a day). Tablets and smartphones are interesting to them, plays are not.
Those same pieces can be used to build what ever you can imagine.
No so easily nowadays. Lego comes with huge numbers of very specialized pieces which are taylor made for that particular model. You can get the basic bricks but most Lego today is aimed at building one model and then playing with it rather than getting a pile of bricks and letting your imagination run wild.
There is one exception though: Mindstorms! This is simply brilliant and the new EV3 version even runs Linux! It's one of the few toys that are around today that I really wish I had been available when I was a kid.
Just use an app to make Lego constructions on a tablet. Teachers these days have NO connection to reality!
My two-year old uses the iPad nightly. When it's time to settle down after he's played with me (his dad) for a few hours after I get home from work. I get home and we play, laugh, rough-house, and read and play with toys. At night, when it's time to settle down (usually an hour, hour-and a half before bed) I let him chill with me on the couch or in his little chair on the iPad. Becuase of this, my son now knows his shapes, colors, alphabet and can count very well. I also use it, sometimes, as a potty-training utility. I sit and talk to him as he sits on the potty and when he does go, I take the iPad away, show him his work, and praise him. I'll admit sometimes when I'm too tired on the weekend I'll give it to him, but ultimately, multiple times a day I will take him outside to play on the playground outside of our apartment complex or at the park. I think iPad/screen time isn't a bad thing, as long as it's in moderation. When he goes to his grandmother's house (the one with all of the big blocks), he still has no problem stacking and building.
Colin Kinney said excessive use of technology damages concentration and causes behavioural problems such as irritability and a lack of control.
Seriously? These `behavioural problems` describe every pre-schooler I've ever met.
Don Dugger
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
My theory on this is that when we moved away from keyboards and mice in the use of phones and tablets, we did away with the last remnants of manipulating three-dimensional solid objects while interacting with computing devices.
I have this vague feeling that our connection to, and assumption that we can leverage, our animal evolutionary history is becoming more and more tenuous as we spend more of our time and focus interacting with items lacking analogs in nature:
As we control and manipulate our external environment more and more while continuously decreasing our bodies' physical engagement, I have to suspect that more of these secondary effects will surface. Just a hunch, I'm not passing judgement.
The main quote comes from a teacher who works for a think tank(that needs funding) talking about conversations he had with other teachers... not stuff he's done himself.
"I've spoken to a number of nursery teachers who have concerns over the increasing numbers of young pupils who can swipe a screen but have little or no manipulative skills to play with building blocks – or pupils who can't socialise with other pupils, but whose parents talk proudly of their ability to use a tablet or smartphone."
It's true and sad, most parents are lazy and just frankly don't care about there kids. Why is a kid under the age of 7 even swiping a screen to begin with. Electronics are a bad idea to use as a substitute for interaction in childhood, any rational adult knows that to be a fact.
As long as they learn to wipe their own ass without soiling their hands, nothing else matters
which is already concerning, as fine motor skills are very important, the other sentence in the article that worried me was the mention that kids now have trouble memorizing even simple lines for a play, since they are used to information being easily always available so they aren't putting in the effort of learning it.
As much as easy global information access is great, unless you learn the basics it's quite difficult to make sense of what's available and to have an informed opinion. Just because you have a river of information always available it doesn't help if you can't relate to it, it makes you that much more susceptible to being influenced, because since you are not able to discriminate between quality information and misleading or wrong information, any page/blog/article of somebody with an agenda can just point to "studies" that support their point (no matter how objectively wrong that point is) and it transforms informed discussions into popularity contests.
I don't think it's tinfoil hat time in terms of there being some sort of overall arching conspiracy about this, but it sure is concerning when you have a society like ours where media has many orders of magnitude more funding and impact than academia, I mean, even the word "academia" nowadays is overlaid with negative connotations (at least in North America) rather than the respect it should evoke: these days an actor/model stating an opinion can easily counterbalance hundreds of scientists/academics with fact-based studies.
Before the internet there were just as many crackpot theories around, however they were not presented as if they were the same as science, if you went to the library you wouldn't find in the astronomy section geocentric books shelved together with heliocentric and general relativity ones: now with your browser on the "internet library" you can find professional-looking sites pro/anti everything and without the tools learned in school/university how can you make sense of which is right? especially in cases where the science is counter-intuitive for a particular issue?
-- the cake is a lie
Its LEGO, not LEGOs...
Kids will be familiar with whatever he/she has had time to play with. Ability to build legos doesn't come built it, kids who haven't seen one will still have to learn how to build them.
did you forget to take your meds?
I gave my daughter a earfull having my granddaughter use the ipad at 2 to keep her entertained. No you play with her using physical objects, and interaction.
There is a simple, less confrontational solution to this which solves both problems at once and provides an important, although expensive, lesson about not giving toddlers unsupervised access to delicate electronics. Introduce your granddaughter to the joys of a toy wooden hammer - the sort that comes with the hammer through peg sets. Then stand back and watch the fun although of course once the screen cracks you'll need to remove the iPad for safety. Even if the hammer is removed I was always amazed at how much our kids liked to hammer using any available implement once they got the hang of it.
You're doing it wrong. LEGO kits are intended to be assembled into a model, then disassembled and reassembled into a different model. That's why the enclosed instruction book shows how to build more than one model. For a dramatization of how wrong you're doing it, go see The LEGO Movie.
Wow, if my parents tried to tell me how to raise my kids they wouldn't have much access to their grandchildren after that. You must have very understanding children.
Or perhaps mature children who recognize that they are new at parenting and that their parents might actually know something about raising kids. As opposed to immature children who are still in an immature teen-like my-parents-know-nothing phase. For the latter, don't worry, most of you will grow out of it, as you learn the lesson your parents already did, develop the experience they already have.
Seriously people. Children have not changed. They are still the result of millions of years of evolution that expects them to be reaching for physical things and manipulating them. Learning to judge distance and spatial relationships, manipulate objects through 3d space, etc.
Relegating them to tapping on glass seems like quite the experiment.
We had TV, PC, gaming console and now tablet.... what next?
give the toddlers a bunch of building blocks and hang the tablet from the ceiling.
I'm sure there's an App that simulates working with legos.
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
More stupidity from Luddite whiners.
Give the kids some time and they'll figure them out.
And if you continue to assume kids are stupid, they will grow up to be idiots just like the ones conducting the study.
FTFY.
Think of it this way: Your kids are geting a head start at Harvard Business School.
Have gnu, will travel.
Parents responded by waving their hands in a brisk right-to-left motion in front of their eyes. "Hey!" They exclaimed, "Why won't these annoying lecturers just go away".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Q: What's the most useless lego piece ?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
After a week in class with only blocks and peers playing with blocks to interact with how many kids are still sufficiently divergent from the norm for concern?
The problem is that you think the iPad is the problem.
LEGOs can be used infinite ways, to create all kinds of things from the imagination. Guess what? So can an iPad.
It is the lazy f'n parents, who take the easiest way out to pacify their over protected brats, and wonder why they cry when they don't get what they want later in life.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
Both my kids were heavy into Legos up until about a year ago.
What happened?
They discovered Minecraft.
They are still building (virtual) things and using their imagination and problem solving skills.
I now save hundreds of dollars a year not buying Legos.
Win/Win
When I was twelve, I played Leisure Suit Larry from sun up to sun down. I spent more of my parents money on the help line than most kids spend on stupid legos. And look at me now! I'm in my thirties and I've had sex with five separate women (three paid, two free). I don't like to blow my own horn, but that's pretty damn good for a guy my age.
I'm going to go with this part:
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=54092c01
It can be the front of a plane or something else that looks like the front of a plane.
The rest of the parts in that set seem pretty useful though:
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=3182-1
Anything weighing more than ten bricks.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
FOR the LOVE of GOD, PLEASE GIVE THESE KIDS a COPY of MINECRAFT. Lol j/k
P2P Anonymous Distributed Web Search: http://www.yacy.net/
wedge shaped wing ramps -- the angles don't work with anything else.
OR
rubber band holders
Why do you get this wrong? The plural of Lego is Lego, how hard is that?
...far too many people can't even spell LEGO.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Legos and tablets are two different thing. The author is clearly not fit to know the difference.
I'm going to go with this part:
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=54092c01
It can be the front of a plane or something else that looks like the front of a plane.
The rest of the parts in that set seem pretty useful though:
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=3182-1
Is your imagination broken dude? I could use that part for *TONS* of different models! Granted, it's gonna be a cockpit, but it doesn't have to be an airplane cockpit... It could be used on a racecar, submarine, spaceship, crane, whatever! (I think I would use it on a monorail - that would be fun!) You could also face it backwards or sideways for a very unique model! It could probably also prove useful somehow in a GBC module. (http://www.greatballcontraption.com/)
Yes, there are many specialized parts nowadays, but the trick is finding new and fun ways to use it.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
What is this http://www.bricklink.com/ you speak of? Hm....
// looking
Oh crap. There goes my afternoon.
Not A Sig
Q: What's the most useless lego piece ?
I've always found the single square pieces to be the most useless and the easiest to lose. I could build a detailed model as a kid and the parts that always were prone to falling apart used the single square. Lego always included them in kits where a 1x3 or 1x4 would work better. I understand that they did it to provide a greater variety of pieces for building unique designs but I never ended up using them for anything....
"Building blocks" in an educational setting usually means literally blocks. As in those basic, wooden squares or rectangles that a toddler should be able to use loooong before you move them on to interlocking blocks (Duplos or Big Blocks) since interlocking blocks of any scale require more dexterity than building blocks do.
If a kid can't grasp and stack those wooden blocks, then mommy really is using the screen to avoid spending time with their kid.
Society is changing. Technology is changing. Therefore, it seems a logic conclusion that how we learn and what we learn, from the onset, changes. I feel the people complaining (educators and teachers association) that kids aren't learning how to play with blocks are more concerned about preserving their existing jobs rather than adjusting to a changing world.
That doesn't mean I think learning to play with blocks, lincoln logs, or lego is wrong or outdated. I think the complaining by the teachers association is just that...complaining.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
already see how I could use that piece as the cockpit for a giant robot, and on a sufficiently large build it could be part of a giant mech's jetpack. Sure, its the front of a plane, but if you get novel with it, it can be bunches of "Not exactly a plane"
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Ship's prow (upside down)
Several hinged for a claw.
Aerodynamic fairing around the parts of a vehicle that fits into the front of another vehicle to lock it into the assembly (c.f. the Phoenix from Battle of the Planets)
Scoops on a water wheel, or teeth on a rotary digger
So there's four off the top of my head in a couple of minutes without any brinks in reach to doodle with.
Stop trying to blame other people for your lack of creativity.
...excessive use of technology damages concentration and causes behavioural problems such as irritability and a lack of control.
NO IT FUCKING DOESN'T <scream/>
Offset vertical joints for a stronger structure (look at actual bricklaying)
Shims to close a gap due to rotation of peg axis.
Spot color
If a wooden block can be a car and a stick can be a gun, I'm gonna call shenanigans on this. It's not a limitation of the specialty pieces, but of the imagination.
Children's play doesn't work the way you seem to think it does. http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195393002.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195393002 from the Oxford Library of Psychology is a good developmental psychology examination of children's play, but the TL/DR gist for your concern is that excessive or overly-guided play very much turns into instruction rather than imaginative free-play. So giving a young child toys whose intended use is obvious really does tend to block them from exploring ways to use it imaginatively.
There's nothing wrong with giving your kids a Mike the Knight outfit or an Ariel costume, but also stock their toy chest with unrelated bits and pieces that can free their imagination. The second four most valuable words when raising a kid can be "What do you think?"
The Rothschild's would be very pleased.
My daughter can do both. She'd get bored playing with either one for too long.
I always loved technology, but my parents were poor, bad with money, cheap, whatever you want to call it. I always knew I wanted to do something with technology, but they hated everything about it (still used rotary phones til the late 90's) You don't necessarily want to deprive kids of technology. There should be some sort of balance, if they are just arriving in nursery school and all they have is blocks, they will learn to use them. If all they have is a tablet, they will use the tablet. There are probably all sorts of toys I am others would take a while to learn, yoyo's, juggling, toys where you try and get the ball in the cup, jacks, etc. fde
Teachers have a vested interest in attacking technology that undermines their importance. Keep that in mind when you read any stories attacking the use of technology in education at any level.
My child has been using an Ipad and Big blocks since she has been 2yrs old. She got her first lego set this year before she turned three years old. She has never had any trouble using either one. My guess is we as her parents interact with blocks and Ipad. The iPad is not a baby sitter. I also don't trust studies.
Due to a genetic condition my 7 y.o. son has severe motor skills issues (unable to stand, or hold a paint brush or pencil), He also has profound intellectual disabilities, and is unable to speak. He can however get around his iPad like the best of them - browsing Elmo songs on his youTube favorites, watching home videos, playing "Old MacDonald" and ordering his favourite snacks for morning tea using assisted communication apps. The benefits of this technology for him and others with special needs amazing!
However, even though he can't use a fork or knife, he can still stack MegaBlocks and Duplo... but only because we invest our time by playing with him and supporting him..
They can swipe a smart phone, too, if you know what I mean.
It also fails to acknowledge that LEGO is itself technology -- relatively modern, high technology in the grand scheme of humanity
It actually is... saw a documentaries on their factories and design process, it's pretty high tech. Designer scults a model out of clay, 3-D scans it, refines it on the computer. Then they build a custom metal piece into which plastic will be poured to create the pieces (don't know how that part works but each one costs some 100k) and have machines that pump out large numbers of pieces with fairly demanding tolerances (so the pieces will hold together tightly but not jam), which go into conveyor belts that automatically sort the right number and type of pieces into the different sets, etc...
Those same pieces can be used to build what ever you can imagine.
No so easily nowadays. Lego comes with huge numbers of very specialized pieces which are taylor made for that particular model. You can get the basic bricks but most Lego today is aimed at building one model and then playing with it rather than getting a pile of bricks and letting your imagination run wild.
Not quite true. This was a trend at lego some years back, back when the company was in a bit of a slump. More recently, they try to limit the number of new custom pieces designed for each set. Quite apart from re-play and creative value, each new part requires an expensive and costly to maintain custom mold (we're talking some 100k euros if I recall correctly). In a documentary I saw, the lego designer was saying that for the police station she was developing she was not using any custom parts (that were not already in use in past sets) so she was able to instead add a custom police-dog figure.
Oh crap. There goes my afternoon.
Also all of your disposable income.
Why dirty your hands with Legos when there's an app for that?
The term for playing alongside is "parallel play" and, as you noticed, children can be ready for it some time after they turn 1.
The thing is: you might have seen it as boring but there is plenty of opportunity to encourage child development with parallel play because if you play with the same or a similar toy alongside them you can demonstrate new ways to play with that item and they will pick that up.
Oh the joys of being a psychologist and finally getting to put years of study into practice without prior committee approval ;-)
Posting anon for obvious reasons...
You could always pull out the Knife of Exact Zero and make some cuts to the piece.
By the way, what's a wedge shaped wing ramp?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
wow man, you have a seriously limited imagination then, specialised pieces sure as hell don't limit you, you can use them, wait for it, for things they weren't designed for!!!!!!
shocking I know!
I'm most interested in why Americans add an 'S' to LEGO?
He doesn't know about the wedge shaped wing ramps. He must be just out of the CryoPrison.
The toy is called Lego. They are Lego bricks if you like, but the toy itself is not plural.
It is the same singular or plural.
The instruction booklet....
Use Your Imaginiation kid!
I didn't say it was useless. Just that it is maybe less useful than other parts. Given a usefulness metric for Lego parts, one of them is going to be at the bottom of the stack. What do you think the most useless Lego part is?
A tablet offers 'instant' gratification with a low learning curve and only requires minimal dexterity. Bored with that app? Here's another.
LEGO requires patience, spatial reasoning and planning, imagination and dexterity. Bored with those blocks, well, you're going to have to wait until your
next birthday. Can't fit the blocks together? You're going to have to keep trying until you get the hang of it. Can't find that yellow block you need to finish your duck? You'll have to keep digging around in the big pile until you find it.
You can see why kids spend more time on tablets right? It's laziness.It's easier. Effortless. Also, lazy parenting. Especially when kids are small they need a bit of help from mum and/or dad with LEGO and building blocks. Don't need much help with a tablet...
I'm lucky, both my kids love LEGO, but I still have to monitor how much time they spend on the tablet.
My youngest son is nearly 2yrs old and loves the CITY LEGO trucks, and watching his dexterity improve just from playing with those and pulling them to bits is nothing short of amazing.
Also, what they fail to mention here is that building blocks are not for all kids. Some kids just don't get it. Just not interested. And that's got nothing to do with modern technology because I saw that lack of interest in some kids more than 20 years ago.
Last but not least, there's been a big fuss in the media here (NZ) about kids going to school and lacking the dexterity to hold a pencil, being unable to recognize their own written name, etc. From memory technology got the blame as well. Not enough time spend interacting with mom and dad.
and it isn't lego's either.
Just sayin'.
My kids play most often with their bristle blocks. I have a 3.5 and almost 7 year old. They build stuff with the bristle blocks and include their other toys, things like corrals, roads, houses, etc. They're much more useful and fun than just legos by themselves. Even my 11yro gets involved as well.
LEGO is very good for your kids brain. The more they play the more creative they are. Gadget now really spoil the children. It does more harm to them.So, don't let our kids to spend most of their time with gadget.
Nearly 40 years ago one of my kids' Kindergarten teachers told me she was getting more and more kids in her classes that didn't know how to hold a pencil or how to use a crayon, and couldn't handle a simple over-sized 6-piece puzzle. Also more and more of the boys were just running out the door to pee in the yard instead of using the bathroom.
..but what they repeat even more is the notion that people have always been saying that and that people truly haven't changed for the worse (only for the better oddly enough)
Despite astounding proof otherwise and the the fact that the past 100 years are nothing like the previous 10.000.
As a parent of a 7 month old...
"Teachers whine about not being able to use the teaching methods they were taught to teach, to teach children who now have skills they themselves do not"
what do you mean by spot colour?
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
There are no Legos. /rant
LEGO is a plural and singular like sheep. Why are people incapable of understanding a word can refer to one or multipule of something.
Mega-Block is a parallel to Minecraft. The size of the blocks irritates me. I've seen some more recent games in development that allow multiple sizes of blocks. Those will be the better system. Minecraft is "fine," but the ball has been dropped and is being picked up slowly by other indie developers.
Being one of those "indie developers," I feel the need to spam about my own effort at smaller blocks, Multiplayer Map Editor. Just prepare yourself to be unimpressed. The game has existed for years yet basically has only one active player. ...and to be honest, I have no idea how he keeps himself amused. I feel like I'm punishing myself every time I start it up just to see if anything is happening.
More to the point of the discussion, those smaller blocks aren't all you'd imagine they are. In my experience with this game, if I were to make suggestions to someone thinking of writing a similar game, I'd suggest they stick with the standard size, or at most cut it in half. I'm not sure I'd do the same if I were to start over with the game, but I'd definitely have to consider taking my own advice on the issue as it would be kind of silly to ignore what I learned the first time.
First of all, essentially no one actually wants smaller blocks. Even those who think they want smaller blocks don't want smaller blocks. If you actually want the ability to add more detail, what you're really looking for is something like Blender which, despite the steep learning curve, is perfectly usable if you're willing to spend a few weeks watching these tutorial videos. My nephew used to play my game, and liked it since it was detailed enough that he could build complex objects like tanks, and he'd actually look up measurements on the internet to make them as realistic as he could. Then I taught him how to use Blender. Building with blocks just isn't good enough for him anymore. I don't blame him since I also never built anything in my game after I learned to use Blender. Using blender is simply more rewarding when you look at what you get vs. the time you put into it.
So your players consist entirely of people who don't want to learn Blender. ...but that isn't all that they don't want to do. They're also not fond of measuring anything. So their ceiling heights are entirely random because you can't just eye-ball 24 blocks, you have to use the measuring info box that the cuboid tool provides, but first you have to know that ceilings should be 24 blocks tall. So how do you know that? Well, I provided a tiny example house, with proper measurements for ceiling height, door height, door width, chair height, etc., but no one takes the hints. They just build whatever they want. Then it looks awful and they lose interest and they go back to playing Minecraft. ...but again, I can't blame them. I use the measuring tools and what I build looks awful too. I tried building a full-size house and only got half way through before deciding I really didn't give a shit.
The only time I really built anything that looked interesting was early in the game's development when I needed a properly-sized house to verify that everything was sane (you can't really judge your speed or height above ground when you're looking at a flat surface and nothing else) and so I found blueprints for a house on the internet and drew a grid over them at the scale of the blocks in the game. That turned out nice and was rather impressive. It's been all downhill since then, particularly because I've never since found a freely available blueprint for a house on the internet.
The performance implications of smaller blocks also cannot be i
...which is why I know what to look for on the box. The web site doesn't mention what blocks you get, but some kind person listed them in their review:
This is what you get for the money.. 132 1x1, 224 1x2 (that is 356 of the 650 pieces) 136 2x2, 36 1x3, 36 2x3, 26 1x4, 39 2x4, 10 1x6, 3 2x6, 6 1x8, and 2 2x8. Nice mix of colors. White, blue, red, and yellow were the only colors with pieces larger than 2x4. Wish LEGO would sell more larger pieces in their sets.
So you pay $30 for a set and you can probably throw away 100 of the pieces because you'll never find a use for that many 1x1 blocks. just imagine what you end up with if you buy multiple sets because for some reason you need more than 39 pieces of 2x4. Buy ten sets so that you have a respectable collection of 390 pieces of 2x4 and you've now got 1,320 1x1 blocks. What the hell are you going to do with all of them? Maybe you can melt them down and turn them into the 165 pieces of 2x4 they should have been to begin with. ...or, no, most likely you'll end up using them as kitty litter.
Then there's all the 1x2 in the set. You can build a wall with the 1x2 that is almost three times the size of a wall built with the 2x4 included in the set, which explains why I remember suddenly developing a fondness for walls built from 1x2 after I bought my sets.
Last time I looked it was rather easy to purchase exactly the blocks you want, and there didn't seem to be any mark-up for the custom sets vs. an off-the-shelf set. I guess their machines that put the sets together have access to all of the blocks and so a custom set isn't a big deal. So if anyone is going to buy Lego, I'd recommend they go that route since, while it is still expensive, at least you'll only pay for what you can actually use.
But I can barely use a pen any more due to spending all my time at a keyboard. When I find myself in the rare situation of having to write things out manually, my hand is cramping after a page.
I have 2 boys, 3 (in june) and 7. They both have tablets but only for boring moments or long trips in the car. They both enjoy the 80lbs of lego we have, but now that the good weather is returning, my 7yo is gone outside all day, and my 3yo is out for at least a hour. I just bought my 3yo his first bike last night, he will get it for easter. Parents cant use TV and various devices to solely entertain their kids. My not quite 3yo knows his ABCs and can count to 15... I do credit that to educational games and videos (though we do encourage the development by singing with him too). I have honestly been considering getting my 7yo a very limited function cell phone, for kind of a new age yelling though the neighbourhood looking for your kid. My finacee is very nervous about letting our first out of her sight It has its benefits and pitfalls.
This is no different than people saying TV is bad and is ruining kids (which is true to some extent if you let your kid sit in front of a TV all day) which is nothing new.
The problem is parenting.
If you let your kid spend all his time (insert "watching TV" or "using a tablet" or "playing video games" or "reading comic books" or etc etc) then you're going to have a problem.
Same thing if you let him only eat his favorite food ("mac and cheese" or "drink sodas" or etc. etc..)
Everything is about balance and variety.
My kids get a little bit of game time on the iPad, and afterwards they frequently act like a drug addict who can't get another fix. And so we explain to them, a little bit is fun, but now its time to do something else. Shortly later, they are playing lego, or kinex, or drawing, or experimenting with random crap they found around the house, or gardening, or running with the dogs, or... and with just a little guidance and interaction from mom and dad they will do most of this on their own.
The problem is not , the problem is lack of parenting.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
If you actually looked at the kits, you'd see that yes, there are some specialized pieces, but the majority of the licensed kits are made with the same basic bricks as every other Lego kit.
Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.
The article's title is just sensationalizing- the article says "blocks", not LEGOs. Years ago when the literacy campaign went overboard, preschools and kindergartens limited or eliminated blocks to make more time for literacy. This meant the the kids were spending more time on reading skills they were less likely to be developmentally ready for, and less time on spatial relationship and physics skills they were ready for, and those are the foundations of math skills.
Decisions were and are being made based on someone's desire to get their name on the 'latest' trend instead of what is correct for the kids.
Kids ENTERING nursery school may not have been exposed to building blocks at home. Not because parents are getting them an ipad INSTEAD but because just not every household has blocks. I didn't have building blocks at home when I was a toddler. I didn't have an ipad either, as the ipad was released more than 20 years after I entered school.
You can't expect a kid to be able to use something the first time they encounter it. But of course they can use a tablet if they have already figured out how to use it or something similar. Could you use a bandsaw the first time you entered a hardware store or shop class? Was your lack of ability to do that based on the fact that you used a computer?
And of course once kids know there is something fun they could be doing it's hard to keep them sitting down doing something boring instead. It's like letting someone have sex for the first time and then saying "Now you have to sit here and listen to church sermons all day instead of having sex. Sex is still out there, but you can't do it." and then being surprised when the person would rather be having sex than sitting there listening to church sermons.
Nursery school and kindergarden use to mean playing for most of the day. Even elementary school students use to get a few hours a day to play. Now we force toddlers to sit inside all day, force kindergarteners to sit still all day in school and then do homework at home. We replace recess with cramming for standardized tests. The problem is not technology, it is lack of letting kids run around and be kids for a few hours every day. Even adults that are forced to work constantly get irritability and lack of control - why are we expecting kids to be any different? Why are we expecting kids to instinctively know how to play with things just because we already learned to play with them? This just in: kids are humans.
Making a small area a different color. For example, a transparent 1x1 plate on the side of a 1x1 block with a peg on the side is commonly used to model a headlight on a car.
I'm a competitive fencer and coach fencing. One of the issues we have to deal with is that all too many children and teens do not have the physical dexterity/agility that one should expect. As a result we spend a lot of time playing games whose sole purpose is to get the student to be aware of their own bodies. They can't run, throw, or perform many physical activities at a level you would expect of children at their ages. They quite often do have very agile thumbs and hand eye coordination suitable for playing playing electronic games. I haven't seen any studies on the matter but suspect that this will follow into later life. If you don't develop physical skills as a child will you be able to catch up in later life? Way too much computer game time and home schooling are my two biggest concerns with current pedagogy practices.
Cursive writing is no longer being taught. Too old fashioned I guess. Not sure how that will play out for contracts.