Guide to Buying the Right
Child Building Block for Preschoolers and Preteens
If you want to know what the ideal child building block is for your preschooler and school-age children, you have come to the right place.
Toy building blocks is one of the most treasured childhood toys. Toy building blocks have so many benefits so enjoyable to play with that it is important to invest on good quality blocks.
So what kind of child building block you can get for your preschoolers and school-age children ?
Your young preschooler will love to play with small cube-shaped wooden building blocks. These wooden blocks often have alphabet or number printed. So you can always use these blocks to introduce alphabets and numbers.
However, let me tell you that if you want to buy the cube-shaped blocks, do not buy the plastic kinds. They are too light, and some have uneven surface they are practically hard to stack. Instead, go for the wooden blocks since they are easy to stack and durable.
At this stage, your child will also be ready to use play blocks with different kind of shape. You can get either foam building blocks or the wooden ones. Wooden building blocks are obviously more durable. But foam building blocks are less noisy and won't hurt anybody if they are thrown around.
Some play block sets only have 'standard' shape such as cubes, pyramid, and cylinder. These child building blocks are pretty easy to find in any toy store. We find that Melissa and Doug building blocks are of good quality.
If your children are tired of these 'standard play blocks', consider getting the child building blocks with 'predetermined' shape, such as bridge shape or dome shape, or the ones which have printing on. Lincoln Log blocks are nice and especially interesting since your child will be able to build a cabin using these child building blocks. Or get the toy building blocks with pictures on them instead of getting the ones with solid colors.
Get as many variation of child building block as you can afford.
By the time your child is in kindergarten, she should be able to 'build' more sophisticated buildings using a variety of toy building block sets.
Let your child to build freely to enhance her creativity.
You may also want to get child building blocks which are made from stone. These will enable your kids to build 'older-looking' buildings. The maker of these stone blocks is Archor Stone.
Another kind of building blocks which we think are nice are cardboard building blocks. These blocks are made from cardboard so they are pretty light. Although they are light, they usually come in very big pieces so they are easy to stack. These blocks are shaped like a brick so your child will be able to build 'real-size' building, like a den, using these cardboard blocks. I guarantee your child will love these.
When your child is done with a building project, ask her to talk about it. However, be careful not to tell your child about what you think your child is building since she may build something completely different. Your child may feel that she builds it wrongly should what you think does not match to what she thinks. Let your child to tell you first about what she just built.
Happy building !!
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