Toy blocks (also building bricks, or simply blocks), are wooden or plastic piece of various shapes (square, cylinder, arch, triangle, etc.) and colors that are used as building toys. Sometimes toy blocks depict letters of the alphabet. This article describes the wood that comprises trees and boards. ... Plastic is a term that covers a range of synthetic or semisynthetic polymerization products. ... A square as a geometric shape is described and illustrated at square (geometry). ... Look up cylinder in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Isometric view of a typical arch a complete idiot is a curved structure capable of spanning a space while supporting significant weight (e. ... A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a two-dimensional figure with three vertices and three sides which are straight line segments. ... ... Teddy bear A toy is something to play with, for children, adults or both, or pets. ... An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ...

History

Witold Rybczynski has found that the earliest mention of building bricks for children appears in Maria and R.L. Edgeworth's Practical Education (1798). Called "rational toys," blocks were intended to teach children about gravity and physics, as well as spatial relationships that allow them to see how many different parts become a whole. (Rybczynski, Looking Around: A Journey Through Architecture, 1992). Witold Rybczynski (born in 1943, in Edinburgh, Scotland), is a Canadian architect, professor and writer. ... Maria Edgeworth (January 1, 1767-May 22, 1849) was an Irish novelist. ... Richard Lovell Edgeworth was born on May 31, 1744 in Bath, England -- though he lived in Ireland, he was the father of Maria Edgeworth and 21 other children. ... 1798 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Gravity is a force of attraction that acts between bodies that have mass. ... A Superconductor demonstrating the Meissner Effect Physics (from the Greek, φυσικός (physikos), natural, and φύσις (physis), nature) is the science of the natural world dealing with the fundamental constituents of the universe, the forces they exert on one another, and the results produced by these forces. ...

During the mid-nineteenth century, Henry Cole (under the pseudonym of Felix Summerly) wrote a series of children’s books. Cole's A book of stories from The Home Treasury included a box of terracotta toy blocks. It was accompanied by actual blueprints that were contained in an accompanying pamphlet entitled "Architectural Pastime." Sir Henry Cole (15 July 1808 (Bath) - 18 April 1882 (London)) was a civil servant who facilitated many innovations in commerce and education in 19th century Britain. ... A pseudonym (Greek: false name) is a fictitious name used by an individual as an alternative to his or her legal name. ... // Basic Characteristics There is some debate as to what constitutes childrens literature. ... Terra cotta is a hard semifired waterproof ceramic clay used in pottery and building construction. ... A pamphlet is an unbound booklet (that is, without a hard cover or binding). ...

Educational Benefits

• Physical benefits: toy blocks build strength in a child’s fingers and hands, and improve eye-hand coordination.

• Social benefits: block play encourages children to make friends and cooperate, and is often one of the first experiences a child has playing with others.

• Intellectual benefits: children can potentially develop their vocabularies as they learn to describe sizes, shapes, and positions. Math skills are developed through the process of grouping, adding, and subtracting. Experiences with gravity, balance, and geometry learned from toy blocks also provide intellectual stimulation.

• Creative benefits: children receive creative stimulation by making their own designs with blocks.

An interpersonal relationship is some relationship or connection between two people. ... A vocabulary is a set of words known to a person or other entity, or that are part of a specific language. ... Mathematics is often defined as the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. ... Gravity is a force of attraction that acts between bodies that have mass. ... For other meanings of the word balance, see: propaganda equilibrium (disambiguation page) sense of balance weighing scale analytical balance (a precise weighing scale) balance beam in gymnastics Balance (song) homeostasis, the biological balance within a human or other animals body When the weights on the plates of this balance... Table of Geometry, from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ...

References in Popular Culture

• Art Clokey, the creator of Gumby, has stated that Gumby's nemeses, the Blockheads, evolved from the blocks that appeared in the toy store that originally provided the setting for this stop-motion series.[1]

Art Clokey (born 1921) is a pioneer in the popularization of claymation, beginning in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, influenced by his professor Slavko Vorkapich at the University of Southern California (known colloquially as USC Film School). ... Gumby and Pokey Gumby is a green clay humanoid figure who was the subject of a series of television shows totaling 223 episodes over a three-and-a-half decade period, animated using stop motion photography, known as claymation. ... The Block-heads were two characters in the Gumby television series created by claymation artist Art Clokey; they were the humanoid, dark orange-colored nemeses of Gumby. ... Stop motion is an animation technique which makes static objects appear to move. ...

Sources

• ((English)) Barclay Woods
• ((English)) Block play: Building a child's mind (from the National Association for the Education of Young Children)

See also

• Denshi block
• LEGO
• Lincoln Logs
• Stickle bricks