What do stacking blocks exercise for children

When children grasp and place building blocks, they need to control the small muscle groups in their fingers, which helps exercise the flexibility of their fine hand movements. Meanwhile, to stack the blocks steadily, they have to observe the position of the blocks with their eyes and then adjust them with their hands. This can effectively improve hand-eye coordination.

Skills to be exercised: Hand-eye coordination, concentration, willpower, balance, and patience.

Game Objective: Keep the block tower from collapsing.

Game Rules: Use 54 building blocks to build a tower with 18 levels, with 3 blocks per level. Stack the blocks in groups of three per level, alternating and building upwards to form a tower. Then, take turns rolling a dice to determine which level (color) of blocks to remove. The removed block should be placed on the top of the tower. Participants need to try their best to prevent the block stack from collapsing or any blocks from falling. If the tower collapses during the process of removing or placing a block, it counts as a failure.

After the game, if participants are willing to provide feedback, you can ask the following questions:

“How did you feel when trying to remove a particularly difficult block?”

“How did you feel when you carefully and cautiously removed a block, but the tower still collapsed in the end?”

“What did you experience when you accomplished what seemed like an impossible task: removing a block that was extremely likely to topple the entire tower?”

“Do you think there are any areas where this game could be improved? Can you think of any new ways to play it?”

☆ Cultivating Patience:

① Empathy and Patient Listening: For example, when a child is anxious, unable to complete the task, and the blocks keep collapsing or they can’t remove a block, instead of saying things like “Don’t get angry” or “Don’t lose your temper,” tell them, “This is really difficult, isn’t it? I also think it’s easy for the tower to collapse when removing blocks like this. Let’s think about how we can remove the block in a way that better maintains the stability of the tower.”

② Delayed Gratification: When a child is eager to get a reward directly, parents can guide them to complete the game objective first and then give the reward after successfully removing a block.

③ Leading by Example: When we play this game with children and encounter a little difficulty, we must control our…