Building blocks as a tool for developing skills

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I just made this video clip. Unlike most of my other video clips, this one does not have educational purpose. It's mostly a visual reward for my son. I wanted to make this video clip since a long time ago, just to document how far along my son has come in his development. It's hard to imagine that once upon a time, he was completely non-verbal, totally hyperactive, could not read, and could not even focus his eyes on static images. Today, he reads, talks, draws, and writes. And he has good eye contact.

Elevators are his stimming behavior. He watches elevators on YouTube, rides elevators in shopping malls/plazas, and play with elevator toys. However, using his passion for elevators, we have been able to teach him a lot of skills, including to talk. Take a look at the video clip yourself. I include my YouTube comments below, too.


This video clip is to document Ivan's visual-manual and verbal skills, and carries no educational purpose. Ivan was 5 years old. Building blocks are a natural channel of output for pro-video children. The video clip was made from an "elevator" that Ivan has constructed, and depicts accurately the way how Ivan played with his building-block toys. The sound track was recorded after the video was done, and edited offline. Ivan made his comments while watching the video clip in 3 passes. (Ivan's actual speech in each pass had more gaps, and the music humming was recorded also separately.) However, those comments reflect accurately his real comments during his regular play as well. In a sense, this video clip is meant to capture Ivan's outputs. Elevators are Ivan's passion, and have helped Ivan greatly to talk. In December 2014 (Ivan was 5 years old), Ivan also started to doodle, write (handwriting), and type (on tablet computer.) His first drawing was an elevator, his first written word was "elevator," and his first typed word was again, "elevator." From watching and playing elevators, Ivan has acquired significant set of visual-manual and verbal skills. Ivan has come a long way from the days when he was completely non-verbal. Building blocks has helped Ivan to close his "outer feedback loop," and that was a crucial step for the development of his deep reasoning skills and for him to become verbal.
Technique-wise, I made the video clip from photo pictures taken with the help of a tripod. The hand pressing the elevator button was drawn by using the MS Paint image editor program. The elevator going up and down actually had a hidden supporting column made from the same building blocks, and the height of the column was adjusted. Everything was pretty much low-tech.