Games for Babies: 5 Ways to Play with Soft Blocks

ByChristie Burnett

Both of my girls have loved soft blocks as babies. Immy was gifted a beautiful fabric set featuring different textures and sound makers and AJ (now eight months) loves this Sesame Street themed set that she received for Christmas. Here are five simple baby games we play regularly with our collection of soft blocks;

Knock ’em down: Babies love knocking down towers and more often then not I don’t get to stack all six of our soft blocks before they are scattered in every direction all over again! You might like to count them as you stack them or sing a simple song like this;

Build ’em up, build ’em up, build ’em high,
Build ’em up, up, up into the sky.

Pack and dump: Pop your soft blocks into a lightweight plastic tub and allow your baby to take them out one by one or dump them all at once. Pack them again and they are sure to be dumped over and over. If involving older siblings in the game, set the tub a short distance away and you and the older child can gently throw the blocks into the tub. A crawling bub, like AJ, is sure to crawl up to dump them back out again and might even be encouraged to bring them back to you.

Hide and seek: Within view of your sitting baby, place one or two of the blocks under a small, lightweight tub or small scarf and encourage them to ‘find’ and uncover them. For older, mobile babies and young toddlers, hide one block somewhere in the room and encourage them to find it. Use your discretion to match the difficulty of the activity to your baby’s stage of development.

baby games to play soft blocks

Developing vocabulary: Talking to your baby is so important to their language and cognitive development (the development of thinking and reasoning skills). When playing with your soft blocks notice aloud with your baby their colours, any patterns or pictures, or other distinguishing features. Older babies or young toddlers might be able to point to an obvious, easily recognised feature on request, such as Elmo’s face or the red block.

Line them up: I will often set up a very, very basic invitation to play for AJ – lining up her collection of six soft blocks, each with an animal figurine on top. When she discovers it she either swipes with her hand and arm to knock them down or picks them up one at a time to have a bit of a taste and explore!

baby games to play with blocks

If you don’t have a set of soft blocks you could always have a go at making your own. This tutorial at Felix George and Me looks quite straightforward. You could add all sorts of additional learning fun when making your own – using different fabric colours, patterns and/or textures, great for sensory stimulation and matching.

Related Posts

Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.

9 Comments

  1. Great post! I have cloth blocks, and I never know what to do with them…so we’ll be trying at least one of these later today!

  2. Great post Christie…i think we often forget the simple toys are often the best! My girls are still playing with theirs and they are 2.5!

  3. Alexandra says:

    My niece loved playing with the big blocks when she was little…and her brother always tried to make her angry and built something bigger/higher 🙂
    Great post! Thanks for sharing.

  4. Karla Morison says:

    Hi Christie
    I enjoy your post about building blocks, particularly the bit about encouraging cognitive and language development, an area of interest for me being a Speech and Language therapist. May I add that useful simple words to use while playing these games would be up, down, in (as you pack them in) dump/fall down. Where is it?, it’s gone! found it/there it is! Kids love it when you are silly too, like putting a block on your head or nose or foot, yet another opportunity to incoorporate words for body parts. Thank you! You might like to visit my blog where my son Lachie is opening and shutting drawers and doors and what words are useful there too http://www.speechtherapyalbury.com.au/blog/language-therapy-ideas-through-play.aspx

  5. Just wondering if u know where these blocks are bought at i have them for my daughter but can’t remember where i got them from
    . as my four month old girl put one cube near her mouth to chew on and it slices her nose and cheek open leaving a nasty little cut on her face the edges are abit sharp maybe i got a default set..

    1. Oh no, Cianni 🙁 Ours were a gift so I am not sure where they were purchased from.

  7. its a great a choice i have big block in cloth kids love to plaay

  8. Hi Christie.cab you please help me with these questions (1) Explain how you would provide for block play activities that are suitable for babies
    (2) You will need to give details on the types of blocks you will provide and explain the progression you would expect and how you would provide resources to encourage this

Comments are closed.