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I will admit- I don’t take out the blocks nearly as often as I should. The thing is, they are all the way upstairs and we are usually playing downstairs. So out of laziness on my part, the blocks stay in my son’s room the majority of the time. I actually think they forgot we even own blocks (several types, as a matter of fact!) I recently pulled down some of their wooden blocks for our Salt Dough Architecture, which must be what inspired me to bring down another variety of blocks today: Foam Blocks.
I wanted to offer the boys a simple pretend play opportunity that could keep them busy while I did some cooking. My boys love to hover at my feet while I cook (do your kids do the same? These 10 ways to keep your toddlers busy wile you cook offer some good suggestions to keep your sanity). Today’s activity was novel and simple enough that it kept their attention off of me and on their pretend play!
To set up I just took out a large stockpot and filled it with their blocks. I threw in a pair of tongs, slotted spoon, and two bowls (one for each so they wouldn’t fight!) They went right at it!
I was able to get some pasta boiling and veggies cut while they explored for a while. I came back to see how it was going and thought it was a great opportunity to do some learning through play 🙂
I requested “water” (blue blocks) in my soup. Hunter happily mixed all the ingredients in his little pot.
Notice I also had to give little brother another pot so they would stop arguing.
I tried to reinforce turn-taking by asking if I could have a turn to use the tongs. Cannon wasn’t having that, though.
I’m sure there are many other ways to extend the activity: asking them to serve bowls of “red soup” (or tomato soup to extend the pretend play idea), requesting soup using only cylinder blocks (great way to bring in some geometry terms!), Estimating how many small blocks would fit in my bowl, or even just counting the number of blocks in our pot all together!
In the end, most of the blocks were tossed out in favor of an impromptu drum lesson. That was okay with me too though 😉


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