Most child development experts will tell you that building blocks are one of the best toys for Creative Open-Ended Play and it helps in child’s social, cognitive and emotional development.
If you are reading this post, you must be considering buying building blocks for your kid. We obviously want to buy what is best for our kiddo but with so many choices around, it gets difficult to narrow down to 1-2 options. In this blog, we will talk about different types of building blocks and how each one helps in the growth and development of your child.
Why you should have a building blocks set in your toy collection?
There are thousands of toys in the market, but if there is one toy that you must buy for your kid – I would say it is the building blocks. It is literally the building block for your child’s growth and development.
Think about how many questions the child will need answers for?
- How many blocks can I stack one above the other till the tower falls down?
- To go higher and add to one side, what can I use?
- If I want to build this structure, from where should I start?
- Which color combination will look better?
- Can I build a car? What about Burj Khalifa? Police Station? Doll House? - Can I build all these from the same blocks set?
Blocks are the best way to foster creativity and imagination. Blocks offer opportunities to test hypotheses and build scientific reasoning. It also builds problem solving skills. You can teach your child mathematical skills like length, comparison, number, measurement, symmetry and estimation using blocks. When the tower falls, kids learn about balance and gravity. Few blocks have numbers and letters printed on them, it helps the kids get familiarized with basics of math and language. Block play also engages spatial sense and motor abilities.
What Are The Different Types of Building Blocks?
Various categories in which we can divide building blocks include
- Based On Building Block Material – Plastic, wood, foam, silicone, cardboard etc.
- ABC Building Blocks
- Magnetic Building Blocks
- Interlocking Blocks
- Rainbow Blocks
- Giant Building Blocks
- Building Blocks for Crafts
- Others – These include block set that are designed to build a structure – Eg – Doll house, car, police station, airport etc.
Now you know why every child should get an opportunity to play with blocks and also what are the different types of building blocks? Let us talk about what are the popular wooden building block sets you can buy for your kid.
Wooden Building Blocks
The Wooden Building Block is a toy that the child will play differently with as they grow. A 2 year old would love to play with the small cars and trains and practice hand eye coordination and fine motor skills by stacking the blocks. However, an 8+ year old kids will use his imagination to build various structures. So a baby can play with block set of 5-10 pieces, a toddler can play with 35-50 pieces and a 5+ year old kid can play with 100+ pieces. You can make the play more complex as your child keeps learning new skills.
Acrylic Rainbow Building Blocks
These are big chunky blocks for 12+ months kids. The blocks come in various shapes and colours. You can get these acrylic blocks in circle, half circle, triangle, right triangle, rectangle and square. There are various ways in chick kids can play these blocks
- Stack the blocks to make shapes and towers
- Rainbow blocks can become windows, aquariums and other see-through objects in wooden block constructions.
- Rainbow blocks can also be a pretend glasses to look through
- The acrylic portion of this block is translucent, so kids get beautiful color reflection when sunshine travels directly through the block window.
- The colours are translucent so the child can also use them like ‘telescopes’ or ‘glasses’ to view the world in different hues.
- Place different colored blocks one above the other and mix and match the colors to create new color
- Kids can use these blocks as a reference to draw various shapes and then fill colors.
These blocks are definitely peaceful and mesmerizing. So, if you have a set of wooden blocks, you can buy these blocks to go along with the wooden block set.
Wooden Marble Run Blocks
Marble Run Block is for 3+ years kid. It needs a bit of STEM knowledge and hence it can be introduced to the kid when he is familiar with the regular wooden blocks. When the child plays with this toy, he/ she experiments with the mechanism of balancing and stability by building structures which will help the marble to run from top to its destination. These structures are built with limited resources, so the kid really has to use his brains to come up with a new structure every time. These blocks not only improve children's operation ability, but they also foster creative thinking and problem-solving ability.
Wooden Clock Puzzle
This toy can be used as stacking blocks, puzzle and also to teach kids numbers, shape and obviously how clock (Time) works. This puzzles comes with 12 blocks with number 1-12 printed on them. You will get circular board with slots deep enough for 1-12 numbered blocks to slide in. There will be an hour and minute hand which can be rotated. Kids can play it as a pretend play clock, stacking block, puzzle…the possibilities are endless
If you are buying building blocks, don’t buy it only from an educational or learning view point. Building blocks are fun to play with. Just imagine an hour of parent-child play time trying to build a colorful and vibrant city of your dreams with blocks. That’s exactly I am talking about! It is fun and at the same time, kids get to learn!
If you have any suggestions or valuable points to add, please mention those in the comments. Do check out our wooden blocks and puzzle collection as well!
