We received our order of Citiblocs from BC Playthings this week. It was so fun to watch the kids crack open the boxes and dump 800 wooden blocks all over the floor and start creating! They tend to build things that they've been reading about or watching on the computer, like boats and ships, houses and bridges. Sometimes we just build random structures to see how high we can get them before toppling over. The little book that came with the sets is helpful to the extent that it displays some photos of finished Citibloc projects, but there are no assembly instructions like with Lego or Playmobil, so it's pretty much completely up to us to come up with our own designs.
Our first attempts at buildings. Pretty darn good I think!
Sam started out attempting the most challenging method of stacking them - up on their ends. This led to a lot of frustration and disappointment until he stepped back for a few minutes, gathered himself, and realized there's more than one way to stack a block. Once he started laying them on their sides, the possibilities were endless!
Sam then decided to try his hand at copying some of the simpler designs from the Citiblocs pamphlet. The airplanes were basic and quick. He ended up building a very large fleet and then the boys used more blocks as missiles and used the planes as targets. War games. Ugh. But they don't see it that way.
Airport tower. Extremely precarious. We counted to 3 and blew it over together in one breath.
A house Sam and I built based on one of the photos in the pamphlet. It was Sam's idea to incorporate Playmobil foliage and trees into the surrounding yard, and to build a fence around the lot.
