Have you ever heard of BlockFest? Neither had I until recently. It's this travelling program that teaches parents how playing with building blocks helps children develop math skills. So it's kind of a workshop where kids get to play with different kinds of blocks while parents learn how to "facilitate" and teach basic math concepts.
Well, not to sound like a know-it-all or anything like that, but I kind of already knew a thing or two about the benefits of playing with blocks and how develops math, logic, etc. Some of it is fairly self-evident and the rest I got from all those smart books I skim through.
But it was still a lot of fun to go to the BlockFest. It was like a mega playdate, really. At least the first 2 times we got to go. The third time things got off to the rocky start, but once a large group of very roudy preschoolers left, it all got back to normal.
So there were 5 kinds of blocks - large cardboard blocks, unit blocks, pattern blocks, Keva planks, and large and small foam blocks. We have large cardboard blocks at home and M knows and loves unit blocks and foam blocks. He gets to play with them at the Marbles Kids Museum. But the pattern blocks and Keva planks were very new.
While he wasn't too impressed with Kevas, M got totally into pattern blocks. Surprise-surprise, he even chose the most challenging patterns to copy, the ones with hidden blocks, and was able to complete them mostly on his own. So now I'm on a look-out for pattern blocks. Oh, and for unit blocks.
Anyway, as you can see, for 2 out of 3 days he's been going to the BlockFest dressed in his astronaut costume. He wanted to make sure that "everyone knows that I am a little boy astronaut". And to make sure that the message really sunk in, M built several rockets out of various blocks. Yeah, by the way, the rockets he designed and built all by himself without my help!
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