Fine and gross motor skills,
body awareness, physical health
| Stage 1 | Tote and Carry (2 and 3 year olds) | Blocks are carried around to feel their smoothness, their weight and to hear what kind of sounds they make when they fall. Children like to fill containers, dump them out, and refill them. |
| Stage 2 | Building Begins (3 year olds) | Children lay the blocks on the floor in rows, either horizontally or vertically with much repetition. Children may play alone or near other children, but rarely in a cooperative way. |
| Stage 3 | Trial and Error Bridging (3 and 4 year olds) | Two blocks with a space between them, connected by a third block. Children learn to bridge by trial and error. |
| Stage 4 | Enclosures (4 year olds) | Blocks are placed in such a way that they enclose a space. Bridging and enclosing are among the earliest "technical" building problems that children learn learn to solve. As children work at building enclosures, they learn the spacial concept of inside and outside. |
| Stage 5 | Reprresentational Building (4 and 5 year olds) | At this stage, 4 and 5 year olds add dramatic play to their block building. They name their structures which relate to a function. Before this, children may also have named their structures but the names were not necessarilly related to the function of the building. |
| Stage 6 | Building Sociodrama (5 year olds) | By age 5, group cooperative play is common. Children decide beforehand what they want to build, and they may reproduce structures that are familiar to them. Children may ask to leave their structure standing and may play with it again. |
Source: Hirsch, Elisabeth (1984) The Block Book. Washington, D.C.:NAEYC