Wooden Blocks

A couple of days ago we picked up a set of 60 Standard Unit Blocks from Melissa and Doug. Thanks Grandma Myra!!! Tesla spent a a good hour playing with them as soon as I opened them. I knew this was immediately a good choice! As you know I have been reading up on early childhood education. Slowly but surely I'm reading up on it. To tell you the truth it's more slowly then surely. One of the suggestions in the book Creative Curriculum was to use blocks to represent other toys to stimulate creativity and brain development. So perhaps we'll play with some toy cars and make noises and push them around the room, then perhaps I'll do the same thing with a block, pushing it around the room and making noises as if it was a car. I found this very interesting, and as I have always been an imaginative person I feel that this kind of stimulation will be easy for me to do with Tesla.

Of course there is always building things with the toys too. Tesla has started stacking a set of cups that we got for her in December. The blocks required a bit more examining with her mouth though before she started stacking them. In the pictures of her playing with the blocks I've stacked them. She's not THAT smart.

The blocks are very nice and the come with a wooden box to store them in. The blocks are made with Rubberwood, and unfinished. Since Tesla likes to put everything in her mouth I did not want to get anything that she could scrape the paint off of. Not that they were toxic, all the painted items say they are non-toxic but because they would not last as long or look as good.

Tesla enjoyed playing inside the box too, she sat inside the box and filled the box up around her with blocks.   Every time I built anything she immediately took it down. But I'll keep building to show her and to stimulate that little brain of hers.

I think we are headed in the right direction for toys. I go through her toy box at least once a week and pull things out that she doesn't play with and introduce something "new" from her bedroom. She's not getting bored, so I must be doing something right. She's also getting bigger and bigger. The things she enjoyed doing, like climbing into the laundry basket are becoming very frustrating because she can't maneuver herself correctly. Her frustration level is getting low for such issues and I'm working on problem solving with her, so that she doesn't scream every time she can't reach her ball, or she climbs into the laundry basket for the umpteenth time and can't get comfortable.