Do you know any other activities, that build fine motor skills, help cognitive development, promote STEM growth and increase social-emotional skills, that are capable of achieving ALL of these things and do them better, than block play activities for preschoolers? 

Are you looking for such block play activities for preschoolers that you can also participate in?

Does your child know only one block play activity, which is to build a tower, and you want to enrich their block play activity arsenal with a few more ideas?

Then you’ve come to the right place my friend!

What are the Best Block Play Activities for Preschoolers?

Let's face it, building blocks are the foundation of childhood play. There is a reason that they say the building blocks of life. They are our first toys, we learn fine motor skills with, but that's not all! Block play activities are the foundation of learning, because these activities help to develop the ability to count and to read and write. As babies and young children, blocks show us how things are put together and how we can manipulate the world around us.

They are the gift that keeps on giving in so many ways. They teach kids how to take turns and build friendships. They help them form major motor skills, and they enhance problem solving, maths and language skills. Social development comes through block play alongside self-esteem and feelings of success. 

If all of that wasn't enough, kids also absolutely love playing with them. Building blocks are a necessity rather than a luxury for preschool kids. They are the best educational toys for kids. With so many benefits come many different opportunities for block play activities for preschoolers. 

So should you allow your toddler or preschooler to Free Play with their blocks, or can you mix it up with a bit of structure? We've put together a list of the best building block play activities for preschoolers you can do with your little ones to help them make the most of their playtime. 

NOTE: for you to clearly understand what we are talking about, before you start reading this post, we advise you to read our post about The Best Blocks For Toddlers, because we will give you our suggestions for the best types of blocks to use for these activities.

What Block Play Activities for Preschoolers Would You Suggest?

Build a block tower

Help your little one to build a block tower or a castle! This is a simple block play activity, and children can learn at a young age. Start them small and then grow them tall. The older your child gets, the more complex you can make the tower blocks. This is a fantastic way to show kids how things are constructed. It also improves fine motor skills and feelings of success when they build it tall without it toppling. The best bit, though, is the end when they get to knock it all down.

The bonus activity with this is that you can also make a contest- who will build the highest tower before the tower topples. If you have more than one child, then they can even compete against each other, or even better- build a tower together!

Best blocks for this activity:

1. Wooden castle building blocks are probably one of the most famous block types out there for building more interesting tower types. These sets usually include pieces that are designed specifically for building towers and castles, therefore your little renaissance man (or woman) can build very realistic replicas of famous castles or towers.
2. When you want to build something of more scale-  big building blocks will definitely be able to make your child’s fantasies of building big structures come true. We chose these for the second place, because literally every child would want to build something that is closer to the scale of reality, so they could be a part of their own story.
3. Stack blocks are of course also great for this activity, because they are literally made to become a tower. It is magnificent to also see other things that children are able to build from these blocks.

Build a Jenga tower

Not too dissimilar to a regular tower but with added layers. Building a Jenga tower together teaches your little one how to make a multidimensional construction and how those pieces fit together. It increases their STEM curiosity and understanding at a very young age. 

This tower comes with the added bonus of excitement and tension. When you and your little one take the tower apart brick by brick and wait on the eventual topple to occur. More than the fun of the suspense, though, your child will learn which blocks to remove without leaving the tower unstable. We think that's pretty cool. 

Best blocks for this activity:

1. Of course this place goes to  stack blocks, because that is literally their sole purpose- to be built into a Jenga tower and then get toppled down when trying to carefully disassemble the tower piece by piece.

Measure your body

Using building blocks to have kids measure their body is a great way to teach them how to build tall constructions. It also gives them a visible representation and understanding of how they are growing. Telling a child, they are getting big can be somewhat of an abstract notion in kids. They are still young and haven't quite grasped the growing thing yet. 

A visual representation is fun and helps to solidify the idea of their growth in a tangible way. This builds mathematical skills. How do they know that they are using more blocks when they measure themselves this time compared to last time? By counting the number of blocks. If the number of blocks is more than previously, your child understands they are bigger because the number is bigger. 

Best blocks for this activity:

1. Big building blocks + Legos 😲. You heard me right! There is no one type of block that is better than the other, rather it is best to combine two types of  blocks for this activity. You can use the big  building blocks to build the majority of the tower and then use the little Legos to build up the few centimeters that the big building blocks didn’t cover. If you wanted to catalog these measurements for later reference, you could write down, for example: “Little Danny at the time of measuring was 8 big blocks and 5 Legos tall”.

Block Matching

Having your little ones sort the blocks by colour and shapes teaches them to recognise things that match. Blue with blue and red with red, square with square and circle with circle. You can also have them sort the blocks with words or numbers, or animals. 

This helps them to recognise what things are and where they belong. It also teaches your children language and mathematical skills and is super crucial for early-stage development. Of course this helps them to learn the basic colors.

Best blocks for this activity:

1. Legos  win this position for their great variety of shapes and colors. Legos can’t be beaten in this, because they have been around for so long, so they’ve had many opportunities to expand their line of products.
2. Colorful wooden building blocks- these blocks are also good for this block play activity for preschoolers, because there are still many shapes, sizes and colors for your child to sort through when you give them this task.

House Building 

Giant blocks for kids are a great way to help kids see a life size construction. Kids can build houses, chairs, tables and other life size structures that they can then use.  Life size blocks foster independence in young learners. What better place to play in than a playhouse built by them?

Larger blocks for preschool children encourage gross motor skills, team building, sharing and leadership skills. And not only that! They also foster all of the STEM and most of the cognitive skills, while being MEGA FUN and creating opportunities for new block play activities for preschoolers.

All you need is  giant building blocks, preferably made from feather-weight materials so they wouldn’t hurt your little engineer in case they fall. If you want to, you can show them instructions on how to build such a house, or you can let them just have at it and build whatever house, tower, fort or a castle they want!

We do have in mind just the blocks for these kinds of block play activities for preschoolers-  GIGI Boks 203 block  playhouse. This set of blocks is great not only for making a playhouse, but your little builder can also build anything else that they want, because the set includes  cardboard blocks.

Best blocks for this activity:

1. Big building blocks a 100%! This is because only with big building blocks specifically designed to be used for building big creations it is possible to create big enough and safe enough  playhouses for your little one.

Create a block maze

Help your preschooler design a maze for their toys to get through. A maze construction allows kids to see a different aspect of the building. Rather than just building a tower upwards, your child will learn how to create tricky pathways and how to block off segments. 

This teaches problem-solving skills but also creativity. The more your preschooler creates complex structures, the more inventive they will become until one day, it's mom or dad who's stuck in the maze. 

For this activity your child can use basically any kind of blocks, and that is the beauty of this block play activity- anything that your kids create is going to of course have random elements, yet there will be some structure to their creations, that is why it is absolutely okay for them to use whatever blocks they want to.

Best blocks for this activity:

1. ✨Every kind of building block✨ will do, because mazes are meant to be random, therefore random types of blocks are actually advisable to be used.

Building block bowling

A building block bowling game is one of the most fun block play activities for preschoolers. It's another take on building the tower and knocking it down, and we think it's great fun too. Unlike the Jenga tower or the measuring tower, this bowl construction makes your kids figure out the best way to lay the blocks for a good smash display. 

It is another fantastic way to form their STEM, creativity and problem-solving skills without them even knowing, because knocking down something with another object requires some ingenuity to be put into it. Kids have to calculate the velocity and the trajectory of the projectile that they will use for their attempt to knock down the block towers.

Of course be prepared for loud crashing noises and if possible try to localize this block play activity to an area where there are no fragile objects or damageable furniture, for your own wallets sake.

Best blocks for this activity:

1. Big building blocks or of course the number one choice, because you don’t need many blocks to create real-size bowling pins.
2. Wooden blocks are great for this activity because they can be knocked down the easiest by the “bowling ball”. They also bring the greatest satisfaction when they get knocked down when the blocks topple.

Floor puzzles

Puzzling out a floor plan fills up the morning before you know it. Your little one will have hours of fun building their problem solving and creativity muscles while they try to map out the puzzle. Meanwhile you can enjoy the free time to catch a breath or to catch up with your household chores.

This activity fosters creativity and also logical thinking, because children want to create a beautiful masterpiece, yet they are constrained with a frame. This block play activity teaches them how to achieve something great within set boundaries and resources. This will be important for them once they get older and realize that this is a natural part of life, that there are going to be constraints and lack of materials, but they can still achieve something magnificent with what they have at their disposal.

A floor plan puzzle can be as straightforward or as advanced as mom or dad decide to make it. You can use an area rug, or even lay down painters tape to lay out a puzzle floor plan. 

Best blocks for this activity:

1. For the first place of this activity we are suggesting  wooden blocks, because they are so uniform and non-interlocking, therefore they give children an even bigger challenge to keep the puzzle pieces together without any help of other interlocking blocks.
2. Legos  are of course also usable for this activity, and their greatest advantage is that there are so many colors and shapes for legos.

Building structures to match a photo

This is one of the best block play activities for preschoolers, that strengthens spatial as well as instructional thinking.

All you have to do is build something yourself from the blocks that your child has (of course your child shouldn’t see how you are doing this), then photograph it, then print the photograph out and show it to your child, present the blocks that they have to use to build the structure in the photograph and let them build at it. It is advisable to prepare multiple building projects with varying levels of difficulty for them beforehand, because once your little genius figures out their first building project, they will be hooked on trying to figure out more and more projects.

Another important benefit for your little tyke is that this block play activity highly increases their self-confidence. It is not hard to imagine why this is true, because we as adults also experience the same feeling of accomplishment that feeds our self-confidence, when we finally finish putting together that table or shelf that we bought from IKEA. We experience the same feeling when we look at the picture in the instructions and see that everything is perfect, just like children do when they look at a picture, compare it with their creation and everything matches perfectly.

Best blocks for this activity:

1. Wooden blocks are great because they increase the challenge aspect for the children, because they not only have to try and recreate the structure in the photo, but they also have to make the construction stable.
2. Legos are brilliant, because children can build practically anything with them, because legos have so many different shapes and sizes, therefore you can give them very different types of structures and objects to build, and see if they are actually able to.
3. Big building blocks are also really great for this purpose because they bring scale into the equation. Parents can even stand next to the creation when they take a photo, to give the child more sense of scale, and maybe even give some tips in the photo for the child.

Fill in shapes with blocks

From all of the block play activities for children this is the best activity that helps children to understand how shapes are formed. This activity increases the child's arsenal of how to achieve the needed results when the materials at their disposal don’t necessarily match the ideal shape or size. This block play activity promotes not only creativity, but also one of the STEM core skills- engineering.

To do this exercise, all you need are some building blocks, a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil.

Simply draw a shape (of coarse draw a shape that they are physically able to fill in with the blocks that they have- don’t draw a circle or triangles (if you do not have triangular shaped blocks) and don’t draw shapes that require more blocks that are at your disposal), then give your little engineer blocks and give them the instructions to fill in these shapes with their blocks.

You’ll be astonished as to how ingenious their final submissions are, and we promise that some of them will even be surprising to you. 

Best blocks for this activity:

1. Thanks to their size and their different shapes,  wooden blocks are the winner for this spot. Because of their perfect size your child can have a greater visual field to let their eyes really soak in with the entire field of this puzzle, while at the same time not needing to use an entire bed sheet for the puzzle to be drawn on.
2. Legos are also great for this exercise, yet they get second place, because due to their small nature, it is a bit more difficult to draw a perfect shape around them so your child wouldn’t get confused with the field.

Letters made from blocks

This activity very quickly develops one of the core cognitive skills- reading.

Making letters from blocks helps children to better memorize what letters look like. Each straight line, curve and little details gets deeply engraved into the child's brain. This is because the child can physically interact with the letters and not only that- they can also make the letters themselves.

To do this activity all you need is building blocks and a piece of paper where you can write down the letter. At first let them build the letters and use the written letters as a guide, but when they get a hang of it, you can then up the difficulty by only once showing them the letter on the piece of paper and then let them build from their memory.

At first they will be stumped by this and don’t be surprised if your little Mark Twain isn’t able to fully remember the shape of the letter that they have to build. Just be patient with them and repeat this activity at least once a day and you’ll notice that as time goes by they will be able to build the letters even without first looking at the piece of paper. Definitely a great block play activity for a preschooler!

Best blocks for this activity:

1. Legos are the most suitable for this activity, because they have the ability to interlock with each other, which is essential for the letters to stay together. They are also small enough that they will not require a great deal of space for children to put them on display.
2. Big building blocks are also a great alternative if you want your children to be able to step back and look at the letters from a greater distance. These blocks also get to share this space, because they can also be interlocking, so children can also create letters from these.

So… are These Block Play Activities For Preschoolers Any Good?

No matter what games you create with your preschooler, blocks are essential to the growth of their mind and motor skills. You can make the games as structured or as simple as you need to suit your child's age. 

Even if your terrible two or threenager just wants to sit and lick a building block, you'll be amazed at the development that's happening. Kids learn with all of their senses, and building blocks are big enough that children can explore taste safely. 

Building blocks never go out of fashion!

If you have any more suggestions for educational block play activities for preschoolers, let us know in the comments and we might include your suggestion to this post!

And remember:

Dream Big! Build Big!