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is to inspire life-long learning through the engagement of concrete manipulatives which challenge and empower educators and children to make positive changes in their development.
as Care for Education stems from our belief that learning should take place through construction rather than instruction, and that many more concrete, tactile tools or manipulatives should be used, not only to stimulate and encourage the learners, but to greatly accelerate the conceptualisation process and to allow children to become more inventive, curious and creative.
Care for Education's Golden Circle
To improve the lives of those in marginalized or vulnerable communities, particularly children,
by working with partners, providing training and resources to foster skills development and well-being,
through play-based approaches that promote exploration and empathy, encourage collaboration and innovation, inspiring the builders of tomorrow to dream big.
Whether you're a teacher, educator, or caregiver, our courses will empower you to create engaging, fun-filled environments that fuel creativity and enhance educational outcomes.
The invention of Six Bricks
A team from Hands on Technologies started working on an idea, that Brent Hutcheson had imagined, around using only Six DUPLO bricks.
About Six Bricks - a Beyond the Brick video
This basic set of six different coloured DUPLO 2x4-stud bricks is used to encourage children to construct and (more importantly) to deconstruct ideas and concepts whilst working on and developing their perceptual skills.
Six Bricks activities help to develop core learning skills – self-regulation; curiosity; creativity & playfulness – the foundation for all later learning, as children solve problems, understand themselves, others and the world around them.
The idea of using Six Bricks is based on a belief that children need to be exposed to perceptual (obtaining information from senses)-motor (learning to move with control and efficiency) experiences, which require them to use their brain and body together.
This is important for most classroom activities - as in writing, for example, where the child must know the alphabet and how words are formed by combining letters. The child must then transform this knowledge into action – gripping, stabilizing and moving the pencil. The child’s perceptual skill of sight will be used to adjust the movements to create the required pattern or shape. This example illustrates how the mind and body must work together.
Performing physical activities also build neural pathways and the more neural pathways the brain has, the easier it is to learn. Perceptual-motor skills are necessary and important in preparing the child’s brain for learning – they build that strong base to support future academic learning.
The DUPLO Play Box contains a variety of DUPLO elements which are valuable as teaching / learning tools in any Early Childhood curriculum as they facilitate development and learning through play. Teacher-guided activities with the DUPLO help children to develop both physically and cognitively.
Children are curious about their environment and for learning to take place, they need to be stimulated through their sense of taste, touch, sight, hearing, smell, and they need to move. Children need to be encouraged to explore, create, play and interact with others and their surroundings.
The manipulation of concrete material is essential to the young child’s concept development and the large elements in the DUPLO Play Box are the perfect size for young children to handle confidently. They are able to quickly build outside of their field of vision, thereby developing abstract thinking. The child can use his/her own imagination to build creative solutions to problems when playing with the contents of this box.
This active learning stimulates the emotional, social, cognitive and physical developmental areas of the child - skills in these areas are needed for critical thinking and learning to take place.
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