New Ways to Play with Blocks with your Baby

Blocks are a great toy that promote a variety of skills and can grow with your child. If you have a 6 month to 2-year-old, try this activity!

For 6–18-month-old’s: Begin by stacking a few blocks on top of each other to build a tower. Create a sound for building the tower (ex: you can say, “up” each time you stack a block). Show your little one how to knock them over to demolish the tower. Create a sound for knocking the tower over (ex: “down” or “ba-boom”). Re-stack the blocks and make sure to say your “building up” noise. See if your little one knocks down the tower on his own. Say the “knocking over” noise each time he does this. He is learning how to play social games. Building the tower up and having him knock it over is teaching him how to be a partner in play. Older toddlers can take more of a lead in this activity.

For 18 month — 3 year old’s: Copy each other’s patterns while playing blocks. Show your child how you can make different patterns with your blocks, ex: 3 blocks in a line, a tower of 2–4 blocks, etc, counting each block as you place it. Point out which structures are taller and shorter and ask him to copy your pattern. Then, follow his lead and describe what he is building as you copy it, emphasizing their sizes — taller/shorter, bigger/smaller, etc. Playing with blocks is a great opportunity to practice imitation and spatial reasoning skills. Counting while you place the blocks also gives an audible clue, driving home the point that more blocks make the tower taller.

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