Looking at the learning activity of memorizing the books of the bible with the use of building blocks, through the lens of Vella’s twelve principles.
I have chosen to review this learning activity primarily for the fact that it caught my imagination as one of the few resources I found that can be used with considerable effect amongst children and adults in the context of a ‘resourceless’ church community in Mozambique.
In my judgment the primary strengths of this learning activity lie in its simplicity, accessibility (no particular requirements that can only be met through some form of privileged contact with money or education) and its diverse or broad span of applicability. For example blocks in the Mozambique Zambezi river delta could be things washed up on the beach from passing ships, wood carved from trees and bamboo, potatoes or clay from the river banks.
As I review this activity through Vellas twelve principles I am able to measure in a number of insightful ways how helpful this approach is as a learning activity in particular respects.
• A guided playing with the ‘blocks’ themselves open an avenue for a ‘needs assessment’. This after having built toward ‘sound relationships’ through participating together in first ‘building’ the building blocks from what can be locally found.
• This activity in itself lends itself toward ‘safety’. Especially in the sense that the participants are able to use familiar things from which to make the blocks. Also the learning activity allows the learners to stay in a familiar place giving both a sense of ownership as well as feeling of ease greatly increasing spontaneity and participation.

I want to draw particular attention to ‘learning with ideas, feelings and actions’, ‘teamwork’ and ‘engagement’.
• I would envision that the blocks themselves could be used to explore ideas and feelings. In the way that they could be arranged in any number of open or closed patterns to convey personal feelings of safety, fear or vulnerability. Or they could be arranged in ways which may depict the major theme of a bible book. For example, building a wall in the book of Nehemiah.
• I really love the way that a basket full of blocks just invites participation and ‘teamwork’ on many levels. All the way from finding the material to build the blocks, through making the blocks and then using them in particular learning explorations.
• This particularly for children and adults ‘of the outdoors who live very visual and physically active lives will be engaged simply by the physically participatory nature of the learning event.
Unfortunately one assumed limitation in any exercise of learning in many of the communities we serve is illiteracy. But to my mind this is an activity that can be extended to learning literacy skills in a whole stack of ways. We would make blocks with just letters to begin to learn to make the words which make up the names of the ‘books’ which make up the bible. There are few better and more significant ways of becoming absorbed into a community than by shared language learning. We used to print words from the indigenous language and their English translations onto shirts. This was a great way to begin conversations, even while walking a mile to fetch water. Will definitely use this back in Africa!