How Children Learn to Play with Blocks

When my daughter was born, I was thrilled about the idea of playing with blocks with her. What better toy could possibly exist? Blocks build imagination, fine motor skills and attention span, making them one of the most versatile, classic educational toys available. Wooden blocks are fun from infancy to the young childhood years. The way a child plays with blocks evolves gradually over time, changing based on a child's developmental level. Here are ways that children play with blocks according to developmental level.

1. Infants begin handling blocks at around 6 months of age. Your baby will start picking up and examining blocks at around the time he reaches his sixth month of life, or at around the same time he begins sitting upright unassisted. At this stage, he's likely to "play" with blocks by exploring them using his fingers, mouth and eyes.

2. Your baby will start stacking blocks at around 12 months.

By the time your baby's first birthday approaches, he'll begin stacking blocks. At this stage, "stacking" usually means putting a single block on top of another, but a few babies are able to stack up to three blocks at this age.

3. Toddlers start sorting blocks at around 18 months of age.

At a year and a half of age, toddlers begin to learn to categorize items. They may learn to sort blocks into piles based on shape, size and color. Try encouraging your toddler to categorize blocks to encourage her fine motor and cognitive development.

4. Older toddlers build towers.

Some time between your toddler's second and third birthdays, he'll start stacking three, four, five, or more blocks at a time. Some kids can build impressively tall towers by the time they enter preschool age. As your toddlers' fine motor skills improve, her capacity to balance stacks of blocks will rapidly advance.

5. Preschoolers use blocks in complex play. Between 3 and 5 years of age, toddlers will use blocks as a component of more advanced forms of play. They might cooperate with other children to build large towers, or may use them creatively to build "houses" and "barns" instead of simple, abstract towers.

Toddlers develop at different rates. If your toddler doesn't seem to be playing with blocks in the same manner as his same-age peers, bring it up with his pediatrician. It's possible that an underlying lag in his motor development or cognitive development is at fault.