BrickSmart: Leveraging Generative AI to Support Children's Spatial Language Learning in Family Block Play
Open accessAbstract
Block-building activities are crucial for developing children's spatial reasoning and mathematical skills, yet parents often lack the expertise to guide these activities effectively. BrickSmart, a pioneering system, addresses this gap by providing spatial language guidance through a structured three-step process: Discovery & Design, Build & Learn, and Explore & Expand. This system uniquely supports parents in 1) generating personalized block-building instructions, 2) guiding parents to teach spatial language during building and interactive play, and 3) tracking children's learning progress, altogether enhancing children's engagement and cognitive development. In a comparative study involving 12 parent-child pairs children aged 6-8 years) for both experimental and control groups, BrickSmart demonstrated improvements in supportiveness, efficiency, and innovation, with a significant increase in children's use of spatial vocabularies during block play, thereby offering an effective framework for fostering spatial language skills in children.
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Studies addressed persistent challenges in traditional curricula, such as difficulties in understanding poetry, classical literature, or cultural symbolism, using AI to help students engage with texts more deeply through visual and multimodal support.
“These studies addressed persistent challenges in traditional curricula, such as difficulties in understanding poetry, classical literature, or cultural symbolism. AI was used to help students engage with texts more deeply through visual and multimodal support [70-74].”
From A Systematic Review of Generative AI in K–12: Mapping Goals, Activities, Roles, and Outcomes via the 3P Model (2025) · cites this paper as [71]
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Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredAt the relational level, AI can foster more positive peer affect and teamwork and is positively appraised by parents and teachers for enabling parent-child dialogue and instructional support.
“At the relational level, AI can foster more positive peer affect and teamwork [107,120] and is positively appraised by parents and teachers for enabling parent-child dialogue and instructional support [71,121,123].”
From A Systematic Review of Generative AI in K–12: Mapping Goals, Activities, Roles, and Outcomes via the 3P Model (2025) · cites this paper as [71]
The Results (pp. 10, 13) report positive parent feedback about BrickSmart’s instructional guidance and its role in parent-child communication. But the study evaluated parent-child pairs, not teachers, so it does not support the claim of positive teacher appraisal. The peer-affect and teamwork clause is attached to different citations. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredAI strengthens the social dimension of practice by facilitating peer collaboration and parent-child dialogue.
“Finally, AI strengthens the social dimension of practice by facilitating peer collaboration [103,112] and parent-child dialogue [71,89].”
From A Systematic Review of Generative AI in K–12: Mapping Goals, Activities, Roles, and Outcomes via the 3P Model (2025) · cites this paper as [71]
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References 59 · Cited by 13
Research works printed but not linked: 8
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- Authors
- Liu, Y., Zha, S., Zhang, Y., Wang, Y., Zhang, Y., Xin, Q., Nie, L. Y., Zhang, C., & Xu, Y.
- Affiliations
- Tsinghua University (CN)
- Wuhan University (CN)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA
- Cornell University (US)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2025-04-25
- Pages
- 1-19
- OpenAlex
- W4409767168
- Cited by
- 13
- References
- 59
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 4
- FWCI
- 20.68
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (62441219)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Automotive Engineering › Spatial Cognition and Navigation
- Social Sciences › Education › Child Development and Digital Technology
- Social Sciences › Education › Early Childhood Education and Development
- Keywords
- block play, spatial language, spatial reasoning, generative AI, parent-child interaction, children's mathematical development, student progress monitoring, early childhood education, AI-assisted learning
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