How designers affect the children's brain. And what to do when you grew up

They were given to us so that the elders would not interfere, that the bowler hat and fine motor skills went hand in hand. But the chip of designers is not only in this.

We decided to figure out what else the designers benefit from, whether it affects adulthood - and how to catch up if you switched from the pyramid right away to an 8-hour working day.



For starters, what to call a constructor? For example, pyramids, puzzles, sorters (when a detail needs to be found), nesting dolls are not constructors. They are called "didactic toys" and are taught to work according to a pattern. This, of course, is useful and important, but like training. Therefore, sometimes I want to give a hand to push the child so that they "finish the exercise."

Real designers thought of such so that the person works at his own pace and does not fully follow the pattern.

for instance

The first massive metal constructor Meccano (England) initially did not contain any specific schemes at all.



“Meccano” is the same “metal constructor” from childhood. Just in the USSR, he was known under the general name "Designer". And there was a creative approach in it - remember albums with homemade products that could be assembled from sets of such parts?

Let's see how such a set could affect you. For those who grew up already in the Lego era - there will also be many interesting things.

British scientists and educators say

Studies proving the practical benefits of designers to humans (say, the impact on the development of motor skills) have been conducted a lot since the 1970s. Most often they used block plastic constructors of the Lego type. We selected a few interesting and sometimes just funny facts from them.

1. Interest in designers affects math ability

Are the development of spatial thinking that occurs with the help of constructors related to the development of math abilities and STEM in general? The fact that the enthusiasm for designers at preschool age affects further success in mathematics was able to show several experts at once.

A) In 1982, a group of researchers observed four-year-old children and how and what they played. In 1998, scientists took and analyzed the school records of those children. It turned out that from the age of 11-12 years, there was a direct correlation between how the child was doing in mathematics and his childish interest in designers.

The results of this work were published in 2001 - they can be found by request:"Block play performance among preschoolers as a predictor of later school achievement in mathematics . "

B) Julia Bullard of the University of Western Montana came to similar conclusions. She has been engaged in her research since 1989, focusing on raising children up to 8 years old.

She devoted an entire chapter to the development of mathematical abilities through games and designers in her popular science book Creating Environments for Learning: Birth to Age Eight .

C) If we take a small age, there is an interesting study about the relationship between the ability to assemble a constructor and the ability to operate with numbers in children 3-4 years old. In short, the better the child handles the assembly, the better he knows the score.


On the screen is the resulting table from the study. A full 12-page study is available online as an unread copy (uncorrected proof - commas may be skipped, for example).

D) A similar study was conducted at an older age. Scientists watched a group of six-year-olds (it's 10-11 years old) in a Dutch school. And they found a connection between how much time the children played in designers and the ability to solve math problems.

2. In addition to motor skills and mathematical abilities, the designer develops:

A) Logic and independence in solving problems, the ability to find different paths.

B) Speech and socialization skills — designers use even in the treatment of speech disorders and autism: children in the process explain what they are doing, answer questions, and begin to use adjectives more often. About how designers work with ordinary children, see point 3 ( “What about Russia?” ).

C) And our favorite is an interest in technology and creativity. We will also talk about this later.

3. And what about Russia?

Krupskaya, the wife of Lenin, wrote about the benefits of building games in which you can construct something, (N.K. Krupskaya, “On Preschool Education”). She was naturally quoted a lot.

But seriously, to get an up-to-date and useful list of books about the influence of designers on the development of a child, today it’s enough to go to any normal kindergarten (for those interested, the list is in the first comment).

The thing is that since 2010 there is a whole recommended program “Design and manual labor in kindergarten”. And on it in kindergartens do their research. In February 2016, for example, an experiment ended in one of the kindergartens in the Yamal-Nenets district. They have a very structured study. Read sometime (link in the first comment), but for now we will tell you the result.

Initially, teachers revealed a large percentage of children in the group with a low level of socio-communicative development (41%) and "insufficient level of formation of constructive skills" (45%).


It was. The indicator “socio-communicative skills” was measured by 10 parameters (hereinafter, for the “low” group, a decrease in the parameter will be evaluated, for the rest - its growth).

The teachers offered the children 13 short classes with a simple plastic constructor - they helped to assemble a robot, a rocket or a house, and part of the time, preschoolers worked independently. As a result, indicators improved by an average of 12%. Those. almost 1 point better for every half hour of the game.


So it became.

Just fuss with the designer, Karl!

4. Scientists speak for themselves

And here is an example from the series: “Coincidence ?! I don’t think so! ” In the 1880s, the Germans began to produce "stone", from a mixture of quartz and chalk, a designer. It was like “Lego”, only more realistic: it was necessary to collect copies of buildings from the blocks, but at the same time - and do something of your own. As a child, Albert Einstein, Max Bourne and Robert Oppenheimer had such a constructor.


Einstein-like constructor was called Anker-Steinbaukasten. The original production ceased in 1963, but the brand is still in use.

That is, the designers are making us "I’m the mother of an engineer"?

A) Indian psychologists believe that yes:


Underlined in red: “I am passionate about designers and reads engineering journals - techie!” - Thanks, Cap! (screen from the book General Psycology, 2003)


B) The Soviet teacher Makarenko considered the same way: “Playing in a child’s life has the same meaning as an adult has activity, work, service. What a child is in a game, in many ways he will be at work when he grows up. ” It sounds logical, but ...

B) In fact, we do not know. And for the sake of interest, we conducted a mini-study at home. About a third of employees were interviewed. Half are developers and system administrators (20 people), half are managers, marketing, designers, lawyers and accounting (20 people).



Asked four questions. Two in the questionnaire were required. Above are answers to the first required question.

And here are the answers to the second mandatory question:



Let's move on to the breakdown of “techies” and “non-techies”.

In the “technical” group, 16 people in childhood often played with the constructor. Ten are sure that this influenced the choice of a profession (“I started with designers, then I began to assemble computers, sites, etc.”), three - which definitely wasn’t. The rest are undecided.

In the "non-technical" group, in childhood, designers loved almost the same thing - 15 people. Five see the connection “started with designers, began to assemble computers, sites, etc.” Are designers and project managers. Seven do not see the connection between the choice of a profession and children's hobbies.

D) Interesting, but do you feel the connection between what you played in childhood and who you became? Please tell us a mini-poll at the end of the post.

What to do when you grew up

Designers are useful for children. Sometimes it even affects their future. What if you lack design after 18? We have gathered some tips tested by ourselves, by time and by Gicktime.

Play with children. This is a no-brainer way to try a bunch of constructors. By the way, they say that construction is a good prevention of Alzheimer's disease.

Start a hobby. Apple engineer Andrew Carol made a working copy of the “Antikythera mechanism”, using all the same Lego.


And you will not say that you spent time in vain.

Make a business. This is a great constructor with unpredictable results.
You can even make your own constructor - and sell it.

If you stay in the niche of small business, we came up with a website builder for you.

Design sites. The option is good in that it suits many people with the current level of technology development - it is no longer necessary to know the same HTML.

Get Arduino. This method is described at Gicktime on average once a day.

Nostalgic. When we did the survey inside the company, people remembered how they kept and passed on to children’s designers, made sticks and ropes and ... like “any thing turned into a designer after disassembling”.