Stack of Books? Nay.
Okay, time for a break. My Little Man is "stressed". We were at our Alfresco Homeschool trying to get our Science activity done when he got a bit overwhelmed with the task at hand. Let's just say that he was not happy to re-do the second part of the worksheet because he overlooked the instructions...
The Little Mister got grumpy and well, yeah, you can see below he did not want to continue working. (Photo was taken for the purpose of reporting to Principal Daddy.)
Stack of Blocks? Yay!
I cannot ask the Little Mr. Grumpy to keep on when he had obviously lost interest already. So we decided to take a break. By his suggestion, we took out our "jenga" blocks for a few rounds of the game. This is one of his favorite games to play with Teacher Mommy especially when he is not allowed screentime.
Sorry books, you have to step aside first as we cool down a little from all those lessons. Can we?
Tumbling Tower
Whatever do we call it? Tumbling Tower, Jumbling Tower, Jenga Blocks, they all refer to a game of blocks stacked on top of each other (by 3's). Ours is a set of 48 wooden blocks.
The toy is recommended for anyone aged 6 years and up and can be played by up to four players -- perfect for my little homeschoolers.
Not only is the game fun and exciting, but it also develops several skills such as hand-eye coordination, strategic thinking, manual dexterity, fine motor skills, and problem solving skills.
Little Man gets some fine motor skills exercise as he pokes and grabs a block and then carefully placing it on top of the stack.
Careful...
Careful...
Careful!
We don't want our tower to fall!
Whew!
Okay, the one who made the tower fall shall be the one to put the blocks up again.
What do we learn? Patience and sportsmanship!
No more tumbling, let's do some building!
Another activity that the little hands love to do with these blocks is to create some structures out of them -- castles, bridges, a house, or an animal pen.
Sometimes, they would even make the blocks stand in a domino-like manner so that they could topple them over and watch the "domino effect".
They may be just a bunch of wooden blocks, but for the curious mind, they can be a lot more than that. Sometimes, all we have to do is put aside the stack of books and lay our hands on these stacks of blocks. Poke them, stack them, tap them... whatever it takes to tickle the brain ...
This morning, that was just what we did.
How about you, which one would you choose?
