Thursday, November 3, 2011

Let's Build A Zoo!!


The challenge for today was all about blocks! Lately, our favorite way to play with blocks is to use them to build scenes for imaginary play. It is usually elaborate houses with custom block furniture, but today R said he'd like to build a zoo instead. 


We gathered some of his wooden blocks and accessories, along with a ton of his animals and started working on top of his train table. It might not look all that elaborate, and it might even appear as though the blocks didn't play an important role, but looks would be deceiving. I lost track of how many times he arranged and rearranged the blocks to build different enclosures for the animals. These pictures of the end result look nothing like the zoo we started out building. We would build something, only to realize there wasn't a path for the people to walk on to look at all of the enclosures. We would rearrange the blocks to put paths in between them, only to realize that the animals looked lonely and wanted more room. We combined habitats. We decorated habitats. We used arched blocks and cylindrical blocks as toys for the animals. We also broke out the play food and talked about what each of the animals liked to eat. 


My favorite habitat was probably the monkeys.  Look at the "Barrel of Monkeys" monkeys hanging from our trees. Ha! 

What is your family's favorite way to play with blocks? 

8 comments:

  1. I love the monkeys! What a cute and fun zoo you built together =)

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  2. I love it! Charlotte loves to make farms with the blocks (though, I didn't get any pictures for our block post). I bet she and R would have a great time playing together, she really enjoyed the pictures of his zoo :)

    ~Aleacia

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  3. You guys have so much fun!
    I have an award for you over at my blog...
    http://homeschooljournal-bergblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/versatile-blogger-award-from-our-side.html

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  4. Thank you all for the comments!

    That's so sweet that she looked at the pictures and liked them. They would surely have a fantastic time together. We actually almost built a farm :)

    Phyllis, that is so sweet of you to think of me. I'm so excited. Thank you!!

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  5. this looks like so much fun - I love the colors and the smiles!!

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  6. Thank you! We all had fun with it. Thanks so much for stopping by, Melissa.

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  7. Oh my goodness, this looks like fun! I could spend all day making a zoo out of blocks myself!

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  8. great idea, i like the diaramas. My son makes cities out of the blocks, highrises, logs floating down the river, and we put in people and trees etc....he also has made bird feeding towers too out of them

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