Blocks and building toys have always been a staple in many a childcare center. But have you ever wondered why this is? Do building and construction toys have some special benefit that cannot be found in other toys? And if so, should you consider adding them to your child’s toy box?
WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT BUILDING TOYS?
As you might have guessed, building with blocks is an activity that revolves more than just mere play. Unassuming as they might appear, they are a powerful way to stimulate your child’s mind and body, helping them develop certain crucial skills that play a large part later in life.
Through the simple activity of building bigger, taller structures, babies and toddlers are able to steadily hone these abilities all the while benefitting from the fun, low-stress environment of playtime.
CHECK OUT: BUILDING TOYS COLLECTION
BENEFITS OF BLOCKS AND BUILDING TOYS
STIMULATES CREATIVITY
Being open-ended toys, blocks provide children with the freedom to use their imagination to its fullest. This extends not only to the building itself but also by engaging in pretend play.
This not only helps nurture their creativity but also encourage them to make use of what they know and even think outside the box, greatly enhancing their mental prowess in the process with very minimal effort.
IMPROVES MOTOR SKILLS
By their nature, building toys require children to put in physical effort in order to play. These range from picking up the scattered pieces to stacking up said pieces together to create amazing structures.
Each individual movement they make serves to develop their motor skills, helping increase their strength and dexterity as well as enhancing their body’s control and precision by figuring out the connection between their sight and the movements of their hands and fingers.
DEVELOP CRITICAL THINKING
Playing with construction toys involves a fair bit of trial-and-error as they continuously try to figure out which pieces go where. To achieve their goals, children must find and choose the best ways to approach each step of the building process.
This means that as they complete their structure, they steadily hone their logic, problem-solving skills, and spatial awareness, ensuring that after completing their building, their overall mental capabilities have been enhanced to a degree.
TEACHES BASIC MATH AND SCIENCE
Through playing with blocks, children actively deal with shapes, numbers, measurements, and even the laws of physics. As they build, they slowly familiarize themselves with these concepts and thus begin to form their own hypotheses and apply and develop their own reasoning skills.
While some of these subjects may be too complex for toddlers, familiarizing them at an early age can give your child an advantage when it’s finally time to learn them in a proper academic setting.
PROMOTES SOCIAL SKILLS
Building toys serve as a great medium for social play where children are able to interact with each other and are given the opportunity to learn the value of sharing and working together.
Cooperative play also helps teach soft skills like leadership, empathy, delegation of responsibility, and accountability through repeated dealings with other children or even adults.
CHECK OUT: BUILDING TOYS COLLECTION
SHOULD I GET BUILDING TOYS FOR MY KIDS?
Choosing the right building toy isn’t hard as the majority of them provide the same benefit with the biggest differences being they way they are played. Some are just barebone wooden blocks while others make use of magnets to reduce the effort required to build structures and allow kids to focus more on using their creativity to create even more amazing structures.
The best part about blocks and building toys is that they require little investment in return for very high value in terms of the benefits that they provide to your child’s development. So if you're looking to expand your child's toy collection, building and construction toys definitely deserve a spot on the top of your shopping list.
CHECK OUT: BUILDING TOYS COLLECTION
