parquetry blocks
Parquetry Blocks has been a mainstay of VT since vision/child/human development became a part of the profession. One of the mistakes made early on was to think of these as only suitable for working with children. It didn’t take long for those of us working day in and day out with members of the human race of all ages, that this was indeed for everyone and that everyone could benefit from these activities.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to the late Dr. Harry Wachs, an optometrist who also was an educationist but who studied the works of Jean Piaget and put his heart and soul into making accessible his wealth of knowledge. Harry, used the parquetry blocks extensively both in therapy and as a general teaching tool. We are also very fortunate that Harry allowed Linda Sanet to spend as much time as she did with him and that she was able to codify the vast majority of the activities and procedures Harry did with parquetry blocks to help people improve their visual abilities and in Harry’s words, their “Visual Thinking”. Linda and Bob Sanet have granted permission for us to share what they call “Visual Form Thinking Procedures” from their popular Sanet Seminar.
In this video Linda Sanet talks about the parquetry blocks. Her interest in them and in learning from Harry Wachs resulted in her codifying these activities for the world to use.
In this video Linda Sanet talks about her own challenges with mastering some aspects of working with parquetry blocks. The parquetry block activities as put forward by Dr. Harry Wachs and codified by Linda pose challenges even for Linda. It is humbling to hear her talk about them.