Preschool Educational Activities: 3 Ways to Help Your 3-Year-Old Develop a Love of Blocks
3-year-olds are learning and developing new skills every day and love to try new things. To choose Age-appropriate activities can help them gain confidence. on their new talents. These preschoolers want activities that are new but not too difficult, frustrating, or long. A toy that preschoolers love is a set of wooden blocks. Construction toys are the perfect toy to improve their budding new skills. Here are 3 suggestions to encourage your preschooler to play with these great educational toys.
1-Build familiar things for your child
A 3-year-old likes to reproduce things that he knows. For example, they can build a house or a barn, but not a castle. Your preschooler can make a simple car but not a spaceship. They may want to build a dog but don’t know how to recreate a dragon. The imagination of a 3-year-old is developing, but he prefers to draw, simulate and build things that are real to him.
Small projects of 2 constructions
A child this age still has a fairly short attention span. He doesn’t overwhelm them with a large number of blocks at once. An appropriate number of blocks for this age would be 60 to 80 pieces. Investing in a larger set that they can use as they get older is a good idea, but at this age you may want to only get a limited number of blocks.
Encourage projects that they could complete in maybe 5 or 10 minutes. Projects that are too complex or large will make them lose interest. If they lose interest, they may end up just knocking over the blocks and that will frustrate you too.
Children of this age mostly use square and rectangular blocks. They do not use many varied forms at this age. They will only use some blocks, such as triangles and arcs. They will mostly use the basic shapes that are easy to stack.
Keep your projects simple, like making a small, simple four-wall house, not a huge mansion with a 5-car garage. If they have to stack multiple blocks to complete a project, they may lose interest or become frustrated. Let your child build something that can be successfully completed. This helps build your confidence. Congratulate them on their achievements. Helping them succeed encourages them to build bigger, more complex things when they’re ready. Be sure to help them build to their level so they’ll want to build again another day.
3-Build Low Frames or Table Layouts
A 3-year-old still has limited balance skills. So remember that you don’t always have to hoard! Instead of stacking blocks, have them build something that is only a block or two high. For example, a row of blocks lined up in the room will make a wonderful train. As they get older and play more with the blocks, they’ll start adding wheels to their train, a funnel, or cargo on the wagons. They could make a row or two of blocks into squares that could be zoo cages and add their favorite stuffed or plastic animals.
Another fun activity is letting them line up blocks on the table. They can shape or copy simple outlines of objects with the blocks by laying the pieces flat on the table. You can give them a very simple image, like a page from a coloring book. They could line up blocks just above the outline of the page or ask them to copy the shape on the table to make the figure. These table designs are really creative. They can create creatures, vehicles, people or their favorite superheroes. Make funny faces using the different shaped blocks for eyes, ears and a bow to smile or frown. There is no limit to these creative table designs.
Many toys today are electronic, “high tech” and have specific ways to play with them. In our business for the last 5 years, we have noticed children of all ages who don’t know what to do with a set of wooden blocks. They will ask you “What are you doing with this?” when on a table full of blocks. They don’t know how to stack them and quickly become frustrated or disinterested. But educators, researchers, and parents know the tremendous value of playing with simple toys that use a child’s imagination. These types of toys help them develop important cognitive and motor skills and help them learn complex math and science concepts. It is important for young children to play with these types of educational toys. Make sure your little one grows up loving playing with wooden building blocks.