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Skills Kids Learn When Playing With Blocks

Building blocks or toy blocks refer to solid shapes made of wood or plastic used for construction play. These building toys are powerful learning tools to help develop motor skills, hand-eye coordination, language skills, cognitive flexibility, social competence, spatial skills, engineering skills, and even children’s mathematical skills.

In this post, you’ll learn more about these essential skills that your kids can learn when playing with blocks.

Building blocks are powerful learning tools to help children develop. This article covers the skills kids learn when playing with blocks.

 

Skills Kids Learn When Playing With Blocks

Motor Skills

Arranging and stacking building blocks can stimulate the motor development of children, most especially toddlers. Children benefit when building or when construction play incorporates extra elements, such as:

Building different things from templates

Talking with other kids about spatial relationships

Engaging in cooperative projects 

Arranging and stacking building blocks can stimulate the motor development of children, most especially toddlers.

 

Spatial Skills

Building blocks and construction play promote better spatial reasoning.  Toddlers and preschoolers are interested in construction, building more sophisticated structures, and performing better on a standardized spatial intelligence test.

Here are the good-to-know facts about the developmental effects of toy blocks among children:

Children who participate in guided construction play outperform other kids on block building, spatial visualization test, and “mental rotation” -or the ability to analyze rotated 3-D shapes.

Block play shows a significant impact on the spatial ability of children. One study on NCBI shows that children ages 4 to 7 years old who engage in spatial play, such as playing with puzzles, building blocks, and board games, have increased spatial ability.

Cognitive Ability

Cognitive flexibility refers to shifting focus from one stimulus to another, which is vital for academic success. Playing building blocks can improve the mental flexibility of children because of familiarization with materials, even with more demanding tasks. 

Language Development

Regular block play can enhance children’s language skills based on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Instead of spending hours watching TV or YouTube, children can highly benefit from playing building blocks to enhance children’s grammar, vocabulary, and verbal comprehension.

Encouraging block play can motivate kids to pay more attention to interacting with parents and other kids. Toy blocks, like other toys, should be tools that parents can use to best interact with children, encouraging one-on-one and face-to-face conversations with other people. 

Problem-Solving Skills

Building blocks are used for divergent play because children can put blocks together. Kids are more prepared to think creatively and help solve divergent problems better. Also, puzzle pieces promote convergent play that can help enhance a child’s problem-solving skills. Indeed, parents can help children overcome personal struggles with the help of toys and games that improve a child’s problem-solving skills. 

Social Skills

Children who play with toy blocks tend to become more socially savvy and friendlier when working on cooperative construction projects. It’s a good idea to encourage your children to engage in communicative play with the help of toy blocks.

Forbes has a great story about a child who made $22 million playing with toys.

Block play shows a significant impact on the spatial ability of children. One study shows that children ages 4 to 7 years-old who engage in spatial play, such as playing with puzzles, building blocks, and board games have increased spatial ability.

 

Here are some tips to improve the social skills of children using building blocks:

Encourage your children to play with other kids using toy blocks and mini action figures.

Explain how adults work or do things by role-playing using building blocks.

Ask your young kids to freely express thoughts and emotions through collaborative play using toy blocks. Also, spending time playing with your kids promotes a good parent and child bonding experience. 

Mathematical Skills

Children who are skilled in building blocks tend to become better in mathematics. One study on Research Gate showed that students performed better in mathematics because of spending more free time in building or construction play word problems.

Here’s how you can teach a toddler or preschooler basic arithmetic skills using building blocks:

First, build small objects, like small trucks, using toy blocks to show your child how to build one.

While creating toy blocks, ask your child to focus and pay attention by telling a short story for each truck, like the path, distance, or route the farmer takes when driving and delivering harvested fruits and vegetables in the market, and how many trucks are needed to deliver this many kilos of perishable goods.

After building 5 to 10 blocks, start counting one by one and ask your child to repeat the numbers.

Encourage your child also to narrate a short story about the small trucks.

Ask questions like how many trucks did you build, the distance the farmer traveled, or how many trucks were used to deliver goods in the market. Be creative by using your imagination and toy blocks to help improve the mathematical skills of your children. 

Here's how you can teach a toddler or preschooler basic arithmetic skills using building blocks:

Conclusion

Your children can learn a lot from playing with toy blocks. It enhances children’s problem-solving, mathematical, language, and motor skills, most especially for toddlers and preschoolers. Also, creative thinking, social skills, and critical analysis are enhanced with divergent play through building blocks.

About Julee: Julee Morrison is an experienced author with 35 years of expertise in parenting and recipes. She is the author of four cookbooks: The Instant Pot College Cookbook, The How-To Cookbook for Teens, The Complete Cookbook for Teens, and The Complete College Cookbook. Julee is passionate about baking, crystals, reading, and family. Her writing has appeared in The LA Times (Bon Jovi Obsession Goes Global), Disney's Family Fun Magazine (August 2010, July 2009, September 2008), and My Family Gave Up Television (page 92, Disney Family Fun August 2010). Her great ideas have been featured in Disney's Family Fun (Page 80, September 2008) and the Write for Charity book From the Heart (May 2010). Julee's work has also been published in Weight Watchers Magazine, All You Magazine (Jan. 2011, February 2011, June 2013), Scholastic Parent and Child Magazine (Oct. 2011), Red River Family Magazine (Jan. 2011), BonAppetit.com, and more. Notably, her article "My Toddler Stood on Elvis' Grave and Scaled Over Boulders to Get to a Dinosaur" made AP News, and "The Sly Way I Cured My Child's Lying Habit" was featured on PopSugar. When she's not writing, Julee enjoys spending time with her family and exploring new baking recipes.
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