Separate the Bricks

Pull hard and detach them all.

The bricks are firmly attached to each other. But they must be separated.
Who will be the strongest? You or the bricks?

Goals

To develop ambidextrous fine motor skills with simple handling exercise.
To understand how to separate the bricks and how they connect.

The adult prepares

10 random bricks
2 bowls

Assemble 5 piles of 2 bricks and place them in one bowl.

The children play

Tell the child to take a pair of bricks, pull them apart …

… and place the 2 loose bricks in a bowl.

Can you take one?
Just take one in your hand.
And can you separate,
pull apart the bricks
and give them to me.
Can you pull apart? We can do it together.
Look, you can pull apart. See?
Can you do it? Pull!
So it’s easier for a child to first separate two bricks.
Because that does not require to adjust your movements to attach
exactly the two bricks together.
So when you just pull them apart, that’s easier.
The purpose of the pre-braille activity.
It’s not itself just to work with the bricks.
In fact the bricks is just a medium we use.
But we want the children to develop all these fine motor skills.
So the coordination, the grasp and release and everything.
So we use the bricks,
but we can use anything else, the activity itself to separate the brick.
It’s to learn these different movement of pulling apart,
attaching things together.
Bricks or not bricks.
Yes. Yeah. Good.

Facilitation tips

If the child is struggling, place their hands on yours while you separate 2 bricks, to feel your movements.
Suggest to create a story to make this activity more fun.
Increase the number of connected bricks: more pairs or more than 2 bricks in the same pile.
Utilise only one bowl: the child will have to search in one bowl for pairs among individual bricks.