Stacking blocks…do you remember those? As you can see from the picture above they’ve become a bit more sophisticated these days. But, the concept is still the same.
I don’t know about you but I was taught to stack the pieces in order from biggest to smallest. And something innate told me that whenever I was playing with a child using this toy I should teach them the same thing.
Well, yesterday I was playing with an almost 3 year old and I decided to mix things up on her. Without help, she stacked them like this:
I took off the top piece from each stack and moved them around. She immediately told me I was wrong and fixed it. Deciding to start over I emptied the stacks and proceeded to replace them all like this:
The little girl got quite upset and proceeded to empty the stacks and replace them correctly. We went back and forth like this a couple of times. But, eventually, she stacked them like this:
I smiled. And I wondered what future generations would do, what they wouldn’t do, what they would dream, what they would risk…if we we didn’t teach them they were wrong and incompetent if they didn’t stack the blocks in the proper shape and size order.
Did you stack the blocks the “right” way as a child?