The best thing you can provide for block play is you. Anywhere they can find to spread out and create. Our children either play with blocks on our living roomįloor, the area rug in their room or on their play table. Play with the BlocksĬhildren love to build long and tall structures so make sure you provide ample space for block play. My son’s preschool teacher applied students’ photographs to wood blocks with Mod Podge. Paint polka dots, spirals, stripes, chevron or other designs or pictures on the blocks to add dimension and variety. Let your child help paint some blocks! He will feel more ownership and pride in the blocks if he is allowed to help make them.Ĥ. Painting the blocks will help your child learn colors, sorting and patterning. This water-based paint is non-toxic and dries to a durable finish. If you want eco-friendly blocks for your children to play with, consider painting them with Apple Barrel Acrylic Paint. We used bright primary colors to paint some of our blocks so that our son had a mix of colored blocks and natural colored blocks to build with. Seal the blocks using a non-toxic plant based oil finish such as Seal It Green Extreme Bamboo Wood Sealant.ģ. Leave them as is and let your child play with natural colored wooden blocks.Ģ. Step 3-Finish the BlocksĪfter sanding and smoothing the blocks, you have several options for finishing the blocks.ġ. We smoothed the roughest parts of the blocks with 100 grit sand paper and then finished smoothing them with 220 grit sand paper. You don’t want your child to get a splinter or other injury from the raw, rough wood. Use your creative imagination and have fun!Īfter you have cut the blocks into the shapes you desire, smooth them down with sand paper. If you have the right tools (such as a jigsaw) any shape is possible. Or you could cut a square block into four equal pieces to make cubes. You could cut square blocks in half diagonally to make triangle shaped blocks. Since they weren’t very big, we didn’t want to cut them any smaller.Īnother idea is to cut some blocks to make other shapes. The blocks we received were pretty much the same size. Step 2-Prepare the BlocksĪfter you have acquired scraps of lumber, look them over to see if there are any longer ones you may want to cut so you have varied sizes of blocks. I am sure there is probably some friend or acquaintance that would be willing to give you the material needed to make your child natural wood blocks. Think about people you know that may have access to lumber. Buy a few pieces of lumber and cut them into blocks yourself if you have the available tools to do so. Go to a home improvement store or lumber yard and ask them if they have any pieces they could donate you.Ĥ. Contact a contractor and see if it is a possibility you can have any scraps of lumber from current building projects.ģ. If you are building or remodeling, chances are you will have access to quite a few cut off ends of lumberĢ. Use leftover scraps from your own projects. There are several ways you can get your hands on the wooden material needed to make homemade blocks.ġ. You may be wondering how to find lumber to use to make blocks. How to Make Wooden Toy Blocks Step 1-Acquire Scraps of Lumber Read on to find out how my husband and I prepared and finished the lumber scraps to make blocks ready for the hands of the little builders in our house. I was intrigued and interested because it would be a very cheap way to produce blocks for our kids to build and play with. It was at that moment, that I first wondered about making wood blocks. Once I looked at the line of wood blocks through the eyes of a young child, I immediately understood the important project my son was immersed in. My adult brain hindered me from recognizing the growing locomotive. Of course! There were at least ten identically sized “cars” made out of lumber scraps lined up in a row. The three-year-old builder paused briefly from his busy work, looked up at me and said “I’m making a train.” “Tell me about what you are building,” I said to my son. The blocks were the cut off ends of lumber being used on the framing project. I found my son sitting in the middle of a whole pile of wood blocks. We were at my mother’s house helping frame her basement. Have you ever wondered how to make wooden toy blocks? I hadn’t until recently.
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