PMENA 2013 in Chicago Part I: Lacking Legos™

I attended the North American Chapter of the international Group for Psychology of Mathematics Education. Thank goodness we just say "PME-NA" for short!

Anyhow, I attended a session about the parents' role in math education. This investigation focused on activities children do at home that could be resources for the development of young children's learning of math. To introduce herself to the parents the researcher planned a home visit to just talk to them in a more casual way before interviewing about what they do with their kids. What she realized after her home visits was that all but one of the 8 families had lots of access to computers, video games, smart phones, and TV (of course). Electronic access was not an issue at all. 

What she did notice was a lack of blocks and other such building and counting toys. When parents have a limited budget, they do not want to spend lots of money on blocks. She said that when parents have choice between spending dollars on these constructing type of toys (which are expensive) or electronics, they invest in electronics because those will be appealing to their kids in a variety of ways and will still be used as the child grows. The presenter of this research made this comment, “Schools should be interested in providing check out materials of these resources. Also, during school time, kids don’t actually need more time on screens.” She added that since her investigation seems to indicate that blocks and other physical materials are what is lacking in these homes, schools need to protect those spaces where children can be actively engaged in working and playing with physical materials. 

I really enjoyed this insight. It makes sense. Better off kids have lots of Legos ™ and K’nex ™, and tinker toys and building stuff, for the simple fact that these materials are expensive. The kids that have these toys also have the electronic devices and may not play with them much either.  Maybe Lego needs to start a campaign to get these things into classrooms to counteract the heavy marketing of tablets and smart devices that Gates and Apple seem to be pushing in these early childhood classrooms.