Day 3 Hands on Play Challenge

Block Building

Anna  @ The Imagination Tree has chosen block building for the 3rd day of this challenge.  She gives some great ideas to get you started on this one. 

We have two sets of blocks, a Duplo set and a wooden one.  The Duplo comes out on a daily basis and the wooden ones are out a couple of times a week at least so this is not an unfamiliar play area!

So whats new for us here? 

 Well, when the blocks come out I leave Croc to it and get on with something else knowing he´ll be entertained for a while.  I'm not usually around for the block play so this is different as one essential part of this challenge is to play for at least 15 minutes with your child.  I´d also set myself the goal of trying to combine more play with Croc and Boo together and up until now the blocks have been Crocs toys and poor Boo hasn´t had a look in. 

I thought Id try one of the ideas suggested and asked Croc if he could make a tower as tall as himself.  He loved this idea, and went up in stages.  First he made one as tall as Boo, then himself and finally wanted to do one as tall as me.  The tower fell down lots of times but he kept at it and kept building and rebuilding.  I reckon the minimum time went on this project alone. 

 How tall?

As tall as me!

Integrating Boo (in a peaceful way) was hard.  There was plenty of pinching blocks and snatching back going off, but she seemed mostly uninterested and kept wandering off.  I found the "postbox" block and showed her how to post through, this did catch her attention and she tried many different ways of posting the block through.

A peaceful moment of playing togther.

Next Croc built a Petrol station for his cars, I was on hand to pass him the blocks but wasn´t allowed in the building process at all!  He then got out his cars and starting telling a story and gave a full dialogue for the characters.  He seems to happily switch back and forth between Spanish and English in his play and mixes it up quite a lot.