activities

Stacking Blocks

May 8th, 2020

Smiley Riley

This activity is great for babies between 9 to 13 months. They are developmentally ready for this skill. It may take some practice because balancing one block on another is trickier than it may seem.

Smiley Riley

Directions

  1. Grab some blocks and get ready to stack. If you don’t have any blocks, that’s okay. You can save empty food boxes or small cardboard boxes to use. I recommend taping the openings shut and covering the outside in construction paper or wrapping paper. That is an optional step of course.
  2. Begin by stacking the blocks in front of baby. This is a great way to initiate and invite baby into the activity.
  3. Your little one might be interested in knocking down the towers at first. That’s okay. Build a couple towers for baby to knock down.
  4. Then encourage baby to help you build the tower. Start out with small towers-two blocks high. Hand over hand modeling is a great way to help baby understand how to stack.
  5. Offer baby a block and point to where you want them to stack the block. Model how to stack your own block and then ask baby to stack while pointing again. If baby doesn’t make a move to stack, help baby to stack their block.
  6. Repeat this. This activity and skill will take time. Most likely you will have to practice this over a few different play sessions before baby starts to get the hang of stacking.
  7. Lots of praise when baby makes a move to stack the block even if the block falls off. We want baby to keep trying to stack the blocks.
  8. Leave the blocks in a place where baby can easily access them and continue playing with them.

Smiley Riley

Riley's experience

Smiley Riley

We have a few different types of blocks. Riley has soft, squishy blocks that are all the same size, nesting blocks, and wooden blocks. We don’t typically use the wooden blocks, but the other two we do. Riley loves to knock down towers, but I noticed lately she has been trying to stack her toys on top of my towers. This made me feel like she was ready to try stacking blocks herself. We started out with her soft blocks that are all the same size because they are a good size for her hand to grab. However, I noticed that because they were the same size, Riley had to be very precise on how she stacked the blocks if the tower was going to stay upright. So, I changed to the nesting blocks instead. I would put a large block down for the base and offer her a smaller block to stack on top. We had much more success that way. Since we have been practicing stacking over a few weeks now, Riley is much better at stacking her soft blocks now too.

Smiley Riley

Benefits

  • Hand eye coordination: Riley is working her hand eye coordination as she is picking up a block to stack on top of another block.
  • Fine motor skills: Riley is working her hand and finger muscles to pick up and stack her blocks.
  • Gross motor skills: Riley is often crawling around and kneeling (balancing) while attempting to stack towers.
  • Language development: Expose your child to contextual vocabulary by narrating their experience. Use words to describe the blocks by their shape, size, color, texture. Talk about how many blocks are used to make a tower. Make sounds for when the blocks fall down like “boom” or “crash”.
  • Problem solving: Riley is problem solving how to get one block to balance on top of another block. This takes trial and error.

Links to materials

Smiley Riley

Smiley Riley