In kindergarten and early primary grades, blocks allow children to recreate structures, cities and landscapes from everyday life. Large block play may be a young child's first experience playing in a group, while small block play may encourage an older child to work with others in solving problems. Blocks help kindergarten and primary grade children develop skills in design, representation, balance and stability. Young children develop their vocabularies as they learn to describe sizes, shapes, and positions. Preschoolers and kindergartners develop math skills by grouping, adding, subtracting and eventually multiplying with blocks.
Older children make early experiments with gravity, balance, and geometry.
Beginning at the age of two, children may use a variety of blocks for pretend-play. Children may become life-sized actors in large block structures, or use figures to create dramas in miniature landscapes. Children value their own block structures whether or not they represent specific things. This will encourage a dialog and offer the child new opportunities to explore. Ideally, the block area in a classroom should be three-sided, appropriate for noisy activity, out of the way of other classroom traffic, and big enough for many children to work in at once.