What type of skills do building towers of blocks or stacking blocks develop?

When you choose toy to your kid, do you think about the educational aspect?

Even though toy blocks and other construction toys might not be as flashy as battery-powered robots or video games, building blocks are great for developing intellectual, cognitive, social, emotional and even physical skills, while providing “environments that encourage and enhance problem solving from a young age".

Blocks are ideal for learning because they involve the child as a whole –  the way they move their muscles, the way they discover how different objects feel in their hands, the way they think about spaces and shapes and how different blocks go together.

The benefits of playing with building blocks are so many that with this blog post we start a series of posts, where 5 weeks in a row we will talk about the benefits of your child playing with this simple yet so diverse, creative and fun toy.   

Each week we will be talking about one category of the benefits:

1.cognitive skills and intellectual skills - e.g. a child can develop vocabulary as he/she learns to describe sizes and shapes. Also, this is a great toy to teach the basics of math – child may enhance their math skills through the process of adding, subtracting or grouping blocks together. We talked about this a bit in one of our previous blog posts about 3 things a child can learn by playing with GIGI Bloks.

2.physical skills - e.g. blocks build dexterity and strength in children’s fingers and hands, and improve their eye-hand coordination. An extra benefit from playing with big building blocks is that the big size makes kids move with the whole body in order to create something.

3.social skills - e.g. building together with other kids, cooperating while playing.

4.emotional skills - e.g. a child feels inspired, excited, happy about his/her great masterpiece built from the blocks, the feeling of accomplishment is there, nevertheless the appreciation from parents that is so important.

5.creativity skills - e.g. a child is motivated and encouraged to think and create something by himself/herself, so he stretches his/her imagination in order to decide - what it will be and how it should or could look like!

Isn't it surprising what a few blocks can do? From an early age, your child can improve language and social skills, spatial awareness, logical thinking and basic hand-eye coordination! In other words - never underestimate the power of this diverse, creative and fun toy!

Follow us on social media and we will keep you posted about the next blog posts!