My childhood was all about Lego and I’m starting my daughter on Duplo this Christmas… but I think that in some ways it will still be a little advanced for her. Getting the blocks aligned so they stick, for example. She’ll be 1.75 at Christmas.
Wood building blocks are the traditional gold standard for building sets, especially for very young kids. I remember having a set and not liking them because it was hard to make things balance, and I couldn’t build anything interesting with them. I’m not sure she’d have any fun with them.
Yes, I liked them when I was young and my daughters liked them. We all has sets like this. They are fun to build things quickly and then knock them over. The fact that they are only good for very temporary structures is a feature, not a bug. They are also easy to clean up and won’t make you scream if you step on them at night like a Lego block will.
Cardboard bricks are cool for building bigger things like forts.
Yes, I used to play with blocks like those in Shagnasty’s link. Build stuff, throw other blocks at it and knock it down. Work to see how high you could build before it topples. I think they probably teach something about physics, about patience, about construction. Mostly they were just fun.
I really liked my wooden building blocks when I was a kid. I think mostly because knocking down a tall tower was so much fun. My son, now 14, played with his wooden building blocks until just a few years ago. He would build barriers and forts and crash them down with his trucks and things. He also used them for position army men for battle.
Both mine as a child and my son’s were very like the ones in Shagnasty’s link, only mine were colored. My son also had a set of wooden castle blocks.
Yes I did. But I’m old. They were the only ones available to me. They were very useful for building towers to knock over and making bridges to walk on and fall off of and get taken to the ER for stitches in my chin. In nursery school we had fold up cardboard ones with a red brick pattern printed on them. Nowhere near as fun or as effective when thrown at someone.
I think I played with them once in a while, but they weren’t my favorite. I always liked Legos the best. Sometimes I’d play with the wood blocks or with Lincoln Logs, and even less often, I’d break out the canister of Tinkertoys.
Hell yes! My dad made me a set when I was five or so, much like the ones linked by Shagnasty. Except there were 2-3x as many as in that set, and mine were a bit bigger. Even I “moved on” to legos or action figures, I’d still use those blocks to build foundations and sets for other toys. I continued to use 'em for various odd purposes until I left for college.
Yes – I bought some for my children when they were little, then put them away in the garage. Now I have a grandson aged 21 months, and he plays with the same 30-year-old blocks. (He especially likes knocking down towers that I build for him.)
I can’t remember whether or not I played with plain wooden blocks as a baby. However, I played with wooden Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs from age “too young to remember” until I was like… 15 or something. I think they’re contraindicated for kids under 3, but they last forever and are extremely fun. Tinker toys were the best, because you can make stuff that moves. Man, I made so many balance beams and working flying trapezes for my Barbies.
I played with them. My little one played with them.
And when I was a kid in the '60s, we had an addition built on our house. Dad gave my brother and me a pile of 2x4 bits that were in the sandbox for years. (I don’t think lumber was pressure treated with deadly stuff then, but who knows. The mosquito fogger truck used to drive down the street during the day spraying us with toxins anyway. . .)
Yes! I loved my blocks. My son loved his blocks. My daughter loved my son’s blocks…
Here is where I share a really bizarre, “truth is stranger than fiction” story: My kids are 13 years apart in age. When my son outgrew his blocks, I had absolutely no intention of having another kid. So we donated the blocks to the Goodwill near our home at the time.
A decade later, I have another 2 year old. My landlord, in another city 40 miles to the north of that Goodwill store, gave us a box full of blocks he’d been given by a friend years ago for his daughter. She played with them, and then outgrew him, but he was a woodworker, and couldn’t bear to throw out blocks of perfectly good wood. They’d been gathering dust in his woodshop waiting for the right project.
Uh-huh. They were my son’s blocks. :eek: He’d written on a few of them as a wee thing, see, and so they were identifiable. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do
Don’t do the duplo. Just get a set (or more) of good wood blocks. My 10 y.o. still uses his. They make great roads for hot wheels, additions for lego, domino falling games, structures of all sorts. We have pictures of his sitting and standing on structures that he built when he was 1. They will be utilized for things you can’t imagine. I have recommended to many people to get sets of wood blocks for birth presents or early birthday presents- to much appreciation from the parents. The only gift that can compete for utility and longevity is a red wagon. So I vote for the wood blocks (and then real lego in a couple of years).
I’m another big fan of wooden blocks for little kids as well. Hell I have a great time building elaborate structures for my daughter to knock down. They’re pretty much indestructable, cheap and don’t need batteries.
And if you want to get all developmental about it they’re good for developing fine motor skills, recognising shapes and colours and encourage imaginative play.
Okay, you’ve all convinced me. I’ve put the Melissa & Doug small-size 100 piece set on her Amazon wishlist as a reminder to myself. If she really likes them, I’ll get her a set of the big ones (which are NOT cheap!)