ABSTRACT
This chapter joins many theorists and artists to question time’s epistemic, ontological, political status as children build complex structures with blocks. It explores how time is not a neutral medium in which life can be framed or matter constructed. Early childhood education historian Larry Prochner traces the history of blocks in North America. He links the emergence of blocks to Froebel’s famous gifts, but he also notes the importance of German manufacturer Milton Bradley, which has manufactured blocks since the 1870s, to children’s current practices of block construction. Block play in early childhood education practice rests on a dominant idea of time that is characteristic of Western thought: time as “spatialized” by having been divided into discrete units. Just as the blocks have a history, so does clock time. The clock plays a prominent role in early childhood practices. In block events, the early childhood education objectives for blocks disappeared.
