Creative Block Play

“An essential resource, Creative Block Play by educator Rosanne Regan Hansel, provides everything teachers and caregivers need to know about the benefits of block play along with pointers for scaffolding children’s exploration . . . Throughout, crisp color photos highlight the expansive creativity, deep concentration, and obvious joy of young children at work and play.” —School Library Journal

“The imaginative, exploratory play inspired by blocks uniquely contributes to children’s development in every domain—social, emotional, cognitive, and physical. Creative Block Play firmly positions the time-honored tradition of playing with blocks as an essential component of today’s curriculum for young children. This all-inclusive manual to learning through building addresses how children’s free and spontaneous block play can foster such twenty-first-century skills as initiative, persistence, critical thinking, problem solving, and collaboration while also encouraging creativity and aesthetic awareness. Hansel’s ideas are both informative and inspiring, making the book an invaluable resource for any adult wanting to expand the learning inherent in block play.” —American Journal of Play


“Hansel supplies a wealth of instructional ideas for block play that correlate to topics such as transportation, travel, and world culture. [Creative Block Play] should be on every early childhood educator’s bookshelf.” —Library Journal


"Creative Block Play is profusely enhanced with photos that illustrate block play in real classrooms and stories contributed by teachers who have successfully used block play to encourage children's development in a variety of domains. Thoroughly 'user friendly' in tone, commentary, organization and presentation, Creative Block Play is enthusiastically recommended for college and university library Teacher Education collections and supplemental studies reading lists."
—The Education Shelf, Library Bookwatch, Midwest Book Review

"Creative Block Play presents an amazing new look at explorations with blocks. It is both sophisticated and playful. This easy to use book is filled with information, stories and images that will inspire any teacher’s imagination. This is a great resource for a college course or for a teacher’s professional collection. I highly recommend it!" —Karen Nemeth, author and founder of Language Castle, LLC

"Rosanne Hansel has written a terrific book. Hansel offers one great idea after another - from the most practical tips on arranging the block corner, to creative suggestions for enriching and guiding children’s play, all the while conveying important and subtle ideas about child development. Any teacher who reads this book will come away brimming with new plans for the classroom and an enriched understanding of the role of play in children’s education." —Susan Engel, Williams College

"Creative Block Play is a book for practitioners. With considerable skill Roseanne Regan Hansel draws from her extensive knowledge and experience in early childhood teaching and leaning to provide both theoretical background and practical guidance for early childhood teachers on using blocks in the classroom. But this is more than a book about block building as the title subtly implies. It is a book about the importance of children’s play and the inventiveness, creativity, and joyful learning that happen when adults provide the appropriate environment, materials, and guidance. Blocks are featured but the book invites the reader to consider many ways blocks are used by children, and the many other materials that can elaborate and extend children’s ideas. Wonderfully integrated throughout the book are pictures and brief vignettes of real classrooms, culminating in Chapter 5 in which 5 stories illustrate what the book is about and what creative block building really looks like."
—Karen Worth, Department of Specials and Early Education, Wheelock College

"This book addresses the importance of block building in all domains of learning and a variety of environments, with much information about documentation, theory and practice, references to STEAM, the role of the adult in block play, and so much more. It was so enjoyable to read that I read the entire book in one sitting! It made me want to sit down and build."
—Dr. Janis Strasser, William Paterson University