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Construction games participate in children’s development
It all starts with 2-3 cubes. Your baby manipulates, associates, brings together the elements of this puzzle, guided primarily by the sensory pleasure of shapes, volumes and colors. Cubes develop structuring in space and imagination. Around 1 year old, the little one can stack two cubes one on top of the other: this is the start of a great career as a builder. He refines his skill. When he begins to visualize the world in 3 dimensions, he begins to fit Lego or Duplo briquettes.
At 18 months, your child knows how to stack up to 4 cubes. He gradually improves his precision in handling objects but also his knowledge of himself and his body, the organization of it in space. Some even see gender interpretations: boys would favor height, towers, in other words phallic symbols. Little girls would prefer to build in width.
2-3 years: your child is built to break
At this age, your little one creates the world. With construction games, he is the center of the world he is building: what could be more exciting than raising a tower as tall as him? Little by little, he diversifies his art. It now associates elements in several ways : it is no longer content to stack, it can also line up three or four cubes to make a train, for example. He builds to destroy. As soon as the last cube is placed, the feat is immediately destroyed with his own hands, with a kind of rage that makes him jubilant. This is also what pleases him in construction games: we build, we break and we start again. Aggression is a vital energy that the child needs to grow: by breaking, he experiences his power over things, and proves to himself that nothing is final since we can rebuild. What reassure him.
His mental faculties now allow him to develop “projects” for construction. Children build in particular to imitate what they see around them, what adults do, an animal, a road or a house. Unfortunately, the result is often far from his expectations: he then needs the eyes and the help of his parents. To share his game, to guide him, it is to renew his interest and his confidence in him. Place one brick each in turn, but don’t build for them.
After 3 years: construction games at the service of the imagination
As soon as he has mastered assembly techniques, the apprentice builder puts the game at the service of his imagination. If he builds a tower, it is no longer necessarily to achieve a feat or to destroy it. It is to attack the enemy castle by placing warriors at the top of the building. With his Lego, but also his dolls and small cars, the child tells himself more and more elaborate stories. For older children, small bricks can be used to make model ships or a fire station. At 4 years old, the child builds to enrich his play world: pas soon as it is offered new games, it is preferable to complete its collection to allow new possibilities of assembly.
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