Montessori and Construction Play: Building Skills for Life

Has your kiddo ever played with blocks, Legos, construction sets,​ or some random loose parts?​ If so, they were participating​ in construction play, which​ is all about building, creating, and exploring.

It involves using materials like blocks and other things​ to make structures, designs, and imaginative creations.

With construction play, kids develop:

While children build and create a world of their own, their imaginations take over. From their respective, those structures they made are part of a much bigger story.

For example, a tower of blocks might transform into a majestic castle for a brave knight. Or a cardboard box can be a house for a doll family.

By combining construction and pretend play, kiddos develop their creativity, role-playing, storytelling, and language skills.​

Montessori education puts a huge focus on hands-on learning, purposeful activities, independence, and creativity. And doesn’t that perfectly describe all the benefits kids get from construction play?

This is exactly why Montessori classrooms are usually filled with wooden blocks kids can use for building and stacking, as well as construction sets or magnetic tiles, which allow for more complex building projects and introduce concepts like engineering and design.

Construction play isn't just for preschoolers! Even babies can start their building journey with simple stacking and exploring activities.

Here's what construction play looks like with different age groups:

Remember that every child develops​ at their own pace. Your job​ as​ a parent​ is to give them enough freedom and space​ to explore playtime​ in​ a way that’s comfortable for them.

Construction play evolves alongside your child's development. Let's take a look at how construction play looks for different ages.

Toddlers are obsessed with stacking, knocking down, and exploring blocks. This helps them develop hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and an understanding of cause and effect. At this age, kids also start to sort and connect blocks, developing cognitive and spatial reasoning skills.

For little builders, our Montessori Building Blocks offer a variety of shapes and sizes for stacking, sorting, and imaginative play. 

When they get to preschool age, kiddos start to experiment with balance, create patterns, and explore cause-and-effect relationships through construction play. They use blocks to represent objects or create imaginative scenarios.

You can encourage this kind of play with our Montessori Wooden Marble Run. With this toy, your little one can build their own marble runs and experiment with different designs.

Around the time they get to school, kiddos are ready for some more complicated building projects. At this age, they’re not just aimlessly stacking, they’re starting to plan out their projects and even work together with their friends and siblings. They also explore STEM concepts and develop advanced problem-solving strategies.

The Montessori Domino Run provides a fun and engaging way for school-aged children to experiment with cause and effect, chain reactions, and creative building techniques.

Construction play by itself has some great cognitive benefits, so let’s explore them.

Construction play is all about solving problems. Let’s say, for example your kiddo is trying to figure out how to balance a block tower, connect train tracks, or build a bridge that won't fall down so easily.

As your kids are making their creations, at one point, they’ll have to run into some challenges, which opens the doors to them finding creative solutions. They might not get it right at first, but this just helps them understand trial and error, experimentation, and logical thinking.

Open-ended construction materials are perfect for teaching your child how to think outside the box. When they only have some blocks or toys they have to put together to make something fun, that’s what they’ll do.

They can build castles, spaceships, robots, or anything else they can come up with. This fosters creativity, innovation, and a sense of ownership over their creations.

Construction play also involves critical thinking skills. When kids get to a certain age, they know very well how to actively plan out what they’re going to build.

After all, what better way to develop critical thinking skills than taking the time to plan out their fabulous structures, choose the perfect materials, and evaluate their progress as they go? They learn to analyze, predict, and adapt their strategies as they build, strengthening their ability to think logically and make informed decisions.

Construction play can be a great solo activity, but it doesn’t have to be. Construction play can be fun for one kid but also a whole gaggle of them. And while they play and build together, they also enjoy some great social benefits.

Kids who engage in construction play are working together towards a common goal. And while they’re doing that, they’re also:

As children work together on construction projects, they're constantly communicating! They discuss their ideas, explain their plans, and negotiate how to build and create together.

This does so much to improve their communication skills, including:

When kids play together, an argument or disagreement will come up sooner or later. But if this happens during construction play, kids can resolve conflicts peacefully.

They learn to: