Castle Blocks

A few years ago I bought some sets of Castle Blocks from Quality Classrooms. Like all the various types of blocks I have they are rotated in and out of our play space depending on the interests of the children in my care.

My current group of children has enjoyed building with these blocks for several weeks now.  They particularly like to design and build impressive towers.

I enjoy watching the cooperation when the children agree to work together on a building project;

However, they have encountered a bit of a problem – the baby of the group gets so excited when he sees a tower that he can’t resist knocking it down.  He does immediately attempt to help rebuild the towers but the original builders are still very disappointed by the destruction.

One of the solutions that the children have come up with is to only build towers when the baby is not in the room.  Although effective, this strategy also severely limits the block building time.  Then one day, while the baby was playing in the room, I observed the three-year-old building this;

I asked him to tell me about his creation.  He said “It’s a tower – that the baby can’t knock down.”  Hmmm, very interesting.  These horizontal towers have become quite popular and can be built all day long without any issues.

Nice problem solving :-)