Building Blocks for Life

Building with blocks is much like building relationships and, thus, involves understanding personal assets that one has to offer.  Helping children to develop skills for personal reflection and social interaction takes time and patience, but results in positive growth for the children and for those who share experiences with them during their lifelong journeys.

These young artists are taking turns to devise a plan and construct it with the available materials.  With support and empowerment, they feel free to turn their ideas into reality.  They set their own boundaries and remind each other of these as they work, in order to achieve a shared goal and agree on expectations.

Every so often, the builders come back together to make sure that they are progressing in the right direction and are using their time wisely.  It takes many attempts to solve the problem, as the technique of trial and error is used over and over to make sure the pieces are lined up correctly and are stable enough to hold others in place.

Committed to getting it right, the two boys try out many possibilities in erecting their structure until they are successful.  Learning how to use their strengths to work more effectively together, they focus on the positive attributes that they each have to offer.  In this way, both have an important role and can maintain control over their self-assigned specialties. 

These skills are important for children to learn so that they can become socially competent and gain a positive self-identity.  The more assets a child has in his life, the more likely he will be able to succeed in future situations and engage in positive behaviors.  Since one of the key elements of asset building is relationships, children of all ages would benefit from having supportive adults, positive role models, and healthy friendships.

  

Art making itself also increases a child's positive identity and forms a personal asset of creativity.  Engaging in creative acts with peers doubles the benefit!  

Building relationships around enjoyable tasks strengthens the individual artists' confidence and the stability of the human connection.  Mutual learning and discovery that occurs within the studio encourages our young artists to look for and find the blocks with which to build, and to use their own unique skills in figuring out how to employ them effectively.