Building.

[rivka]

For Christmas, my parents gave Alex a lovely set of unit blocks, because she'd really enjoyed playing with the ancient unit blocks she discovered in their toy closet. At that point, she knew one thing to do with blocks: stack them on top of each other until they fell over. She had trouble figuring out what would and wouldn't balance, so they tended to fall over sooner, rather than later. After a few weeks, she pretty much stopped playing with them.

In the last month or so, she's started building again. Really building. Every-block-out-of-the-box building. She builds with such seriousness and sense of purpose. Here is a "castle with a tower" she made this morning:



The interesting thing to me is that she's not picking up where she left off. She's building large, complex structures in which the pieces balance well. It seems like it must be maturation, rather than practice - she didn't work and work with blocks until she figured out how to really build, she just got old enough to really build. That's kind of cool.

Another view of the castle:



Another day, she decided to build a house that was big enough to play in:

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[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Oh, by the way, check out the toys at that link. The firetruck was finally retired a year ago after about 50 years of repainting, as it was falling apart. The red-and-brown carpet train is Brio-brand, and those were made in the late forties and the fifties. We have two, actually, one a bit bigger. There are old-style Playskool people there, and My Little Pony, and I think the dog is a Beanie baby. The tiny fire trucks are mostly Matchbox, I think. That old green tow-truck/crane has a millon layers of paint on it. It's probably fifty years old. (The school was built in 1956.) Basically, if kids like it, it stays in play and the repairs continue. Nothing has batteries.