Do you remember playing with blocks as a wee one?

I remember many peaceful hours spent playing with them. I loved blocks because they facilitate imaginary play and physical play too. It’s fun to practice eye hand coordination, explore spatial relations, and use small motor skills at the same time you build crazy castles, tall towers and all manner of imaginary things. I’m sure blocks must help kids develop mechanical skills too. Blocks are fun for mixed-age play since older children and adults love them just as much as very young children do. Blocks are a noncompetitive toy. Children can play individually with blocks or cooperatively by building structures together. The simplest cooperative game  with blocks I know of is a construction game. It goes like this…it’s a classic and always SO FUN! Just build the highest vertical tower you can, taking turns. Eventually the tower will crash! But it’s fun building it together, encouraging one another and offering helpful suggestions as in all cooperative games. Now here is the serious part. Gwen Dewar PhD at ParentingScience.com reports a study on using cooperative play with blocks to help autistic kids. Playing together cooperatively with blocks helped the autistic kids make more social language improvements than being directly coached in the social use of language. See http://www.parentingscience.com/toy-blocks.html . Are you psyched about blocks and looking for a good set? I sell blocks at CooperativeGames.com since they are such a great and versatile noncompetitive toy. Click here to shop  https://cooperativegames.com/ I chose the Green Toys brand since Green Toys products are all made from recycled milk jugs in the USA. They are safe for kids and good for the environment, sturdy, and easy for little hands to manipulate. In honor of this blog on #cooperative games with blocks, and in honor of the holidays, Green Toys blocks are now the Deal of the Day at CooperativeGames.com at a whopping 40% off the regular price! Please share with parents and teachers, especially those who work with autistic kids. Thanks and Enjoy! From Suzanne Lyons at CooperativeGames.com.