My son, Quinn, has a fine motor delay in addition to having Asperger’s, so any type of blocks are great for developing those fine motor skills. The City Blocks by Guidecraft are a fun, different type of wooden blocks that we don’t have, thus making them more fun to Quinn. City Blocks are blocks made from eco-friendly rubber wood, a renewable resource, and are stained with non-toxic dyes and come with a sturdy carrying bag for storage. These versatile blocks can be used to make anything, but are especially great for making buildings and, our favorite, castles. In fact, these blocks are no longer called “city blocks” here, but instead “castle blocks” because we build so many awesome castles with them. They even have trees and wooden people to complete the playtime experience and adding a dramatic play and social/emotional awareness bonus to playing with these blocks.
Playing with blocks is great for building hand/eye coordination and visual perception, the former being something Quinn really struggles with.
We love to do many activities with these blocks in addition to making castles, like stacking them, then knocking them down, of course, building race tracks, garages, mazes or obstacles courses, and we’ve tested our jumping ability by seeing how many blocks Quinn can jump over. We’ve even done experiments like hypothesizing how high of a tower we can build on the tile floor and if we can build to the same heights on the carpet. We’ve had many hours of fun from these blocks with many, many more to come in the future years.
As with all Guidecraft’s products, these are extremely well-made and I would foresee them lasting for longer than one generation of children. These City Blocks retail for $45 on www.Guidecraft.com, and are worth every penny in my opinion.
Thank you to Guidecraft for providing a complimentary product sample for us to base this review upon.
