Simple games with wooden blocks

Everyone has some sort of building blocks right? Even if you don't there's bound to be something in your house that you can use instead. In this series of blogs the aim is to get you thinking creatively about the materials you have to hand and how you can use them in different ways to play with your children.

At at time when it's difficult if not impossible for some to get out of the house and add to your collection of available resources, its really helping me to improvise with what we have. If you've already read the Lego blog, a lot of those activities will also work with wooden block and vice versa. There are so many possibilities for creating games and activities with these simple materials without costing you a penny. 

Once you've done a couple of them with your small people and given them some inspiration as to what they can do with the blocks, it's likely they'll start coming up with ideas and adaptations of their own. So, you can grab yourself a well earned cuppa or get in half hour of email catch up in (works for me about 50% of the time anyway!)
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What you will need to do all of these activities

​Wooden Blocks - If you don't have any then lego/duplo or stickle bricks or dominos or jenga or anything that you can stack up basically.

Tape - or string or a piece of paper or a shape in your rug, anything you can mark out a shape with.

Loo roll middles/cardboard - any kind of loo roll middles and/or scrap card, empty cereal boxes etc. will work well

Marble - if you don't have a marble, any small ball will work just fine, I have some small wooden balls from a broke fiddle toy that I use for this, a ping pong ball or even a tennis ball might work.

Fill the shape

​You will need

wooden blocks
Tape

Object of the activity - To use wooden blocks to fill a shape

How to do it - from the basic concept of using the blocks to fill in a shape so there's no gaps there's lots of options for expanding and varying this activity. You can make it a race and see who can fill there square fastest or set a time limit and see how much of the square you can fill in that time. You could change the rules so that you can only use one kind of wooden block or only one of each type of block and you can make it easier or more challenging depending on the age and ability of your child.

Tallest Tower

​You will need

Wooden blocks

Object of the activity - Build the tallest tower

How to do it - As with fill the shape there are many possibilities here. You could give each player the same amount and type of blocks and see who can build the tallest tower. Or you could work together to add one block at a time till the tower falls over, count the bricks and try and beat your best score next time. Or you could take it in turns to build a tower taller than the one before. So, the first player builds a 3 block tower, the next player builds a 4 block tower and so on until a player can't beat the one before.
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Shape / colour sorting

You will need

Wooden Blocks

Object of the activity - Sort the blocks into groups 

How to do it - This is my 3 year olds favourite, she loves matching and sorting at the moment and a mixed box of wooden blocks is idea. I grab a few handfuls and give set her a sorting task, there are lots of ways to do this. You could sort by colour or by shape depending on what kind of blocks you have (this probably won't work if you're using jenga blocks!) We've also started to introduce numbers into her sorting, can you put then in groups of 3? Can you find me 4 cubes? etc.

Maze

You will need

Wooden blocks
Marble

Object of the activity - To build a maze and move your marble through it


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​How to do it - First create your maze! Use the wooden blocks to create a maze that you can work a marble through, this can be a traditional maze with dead ends and multiple paths or a simple zig-zag type structures or simple continuous path. My 9 year old really likes creating mazes for his little sisters and if he's not around I tend to do the vast majority of the maze building. Then, use a fingertip to move the marble through the maze, my 3 and 4 year olds really enjoy this bit!
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Marble run

You will need

Wooden blocks
Marble
Loo rolls/ cardboard 

Object of the activity - Create a marble run and launch your marble down it
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bYHow to do it - Use blocks to create different heights for ramps made from cardboard and loo roll tubes. Stabilise the ramps using blocks on either side so the don't fall off. You can make something really simple with just a couple of levels or something much more complex depending on the age and ability of your child. When it's ready, try it out with your marble. It will inevitably fall apart at some point and you'll need to start again! It's a great exercise in experimenting with structure and design and testing what works and what doesn't.

So, there you have it, lots of options for using wooden blocks to create games and activities you can do with your little ones. These aren't going to always be activities that engage your little ones for a long time, sometimes they will really get into and you'll have an hours worth of fun, sometimes it'll be 5 minutes. But sometimes all it needs is 5 minutes, if things are getting intense and your little ones really need you to give them some time and attention, you can grab a few things and get a simple activity going in less than a minute.

We'd love to hear how you've used these ideas with your little ones and how you've adapted them. Please feel free to share photos of the activities you've been doing and of you have any that we could add to the collection, that would be great too.

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By Jeni Atkinson - CalmFamily Director