Kids Can Swipe a Screen But Can't Use LEGOs 355
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."
Re:most lego's are a rip off (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of one of the most frustrating realizations of my life. When I was a kid, I was a big fan of Lego. I often asked for lego as gifts but rarely got any.
As an adult, I found out why. My mom asked me what a little boy in the family might want as a gift. I asked what he was into, and one of the things was Lego. Apparently he was a big fan too.
"Then you can't go wrong with more Lego," I said.
My mom replies "But he already has Lego."
*GIANT FUCKING FACEPALM*
Now it all made sense :-(
Specialized Pieces (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Parents fault (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.
You should really do both. My daughter had her own desktop computer before the age of 2. Mainly because she was so fascinated by me working on one all day. I loaded a bunch of edutainment programs on it for her. We didn't use it as a baby sitter though. We would do things together on it. Though sometimes she used it herself. But we also played with MegaBlocks when she was at that age too. It was fun to see how high we could stack them, or chase each other around with them on our fingers. As she got older we got Kinects and smaller Lego blocks. Eventually she needed a new computer and eventually a laptop. The only thing she asked for for her 7th birthday was to have her computer connected to the internet.
She had a school project a few weeks ago where she looked up information on the internet for a poster about an element and built a 3D model of the atom using metal rings and styrofoam balls. Her teacher went nuts over both.
Anyhow, as important it is to have fine motor control, computers are ubiquitous these days. Trying to keep kids away from them is not the best approach. However, I agree with you. Parents shouldn't use them as a baby sitter either.
Re:Specialized Pieces (Score:1, Interesting)
Can't remember who to attribute it to, so I'll plagiarize and misquote.
"When I was a kid, a Lego castle was a big box full of tiny pieces and a 300 page instruction manual showing how to piece together a castle that looked like the one on the box. Now a Lego castle consists of one big castle-shaped piece and a 5 page instruction booklet about where to put the other 20 decorations so that it looks like the one on the box."
Re:most lego's are a rip off (Score:2, Interesting)
There are three sizes, I think. The standard LEGO size, the Duplo size, and the Mega-block size. The last one is HUGE, and it's so big I'm not sure I see a point. My experience so far says they can hold and manipulate the Duplo by the time they are 18 months. Not expertly, but enough to put some pieces togethera, and there's nothing wrong with a little challenge. Plus, Duplo are far more reasonable to merge with the small LEGO size when they graduate, while Mega Block size are so big they're basically unrelated.