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:

Comments

[geekymary.livejournal.com]

So that's what those blocks are called. I tried asking for those for Eddie for Christmas and we just got lotsa Duplo. Which is good, but I love those blocks.

It's got to be so awesome to watch her CREATE something. Neat.

Oh, and Eddie's got those same pajamas. I remember when you posted about them, frustrated that girl pajamas were so girly, and you found those in the boys section. I wondered if they were the same ones then, and now I see they are. Did you notice that the dinosaur glows in the dark?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Did you notice that the dinosaur glows in the dark?

Yes! She's got a rocket ship pair too, with red and white stripes.

I highly recommend these Melissa & Doug blocks - it's so hard to find unit blocks for less than $100 anywhere else, and the quality of the blocks is great. They're lovely to touch and hold - they just sort of compel play, even from adults.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

We've got blocks too, and whenever adults-without-children visit us, they all end up sitting on the floor and building stuff. Though maybe that says more about our friends than anything.

Elena loves to build tall tall towers - to see how tall they can get before they fall over. She's actually quite good at it.