A big shipment of cat food arrived today, and before I put the cans away, I had a feeling they would make perfect toddler building blocks! Boy was I right. No sooner did I put the boxes of cans down on the ground than Veronika had her hands on them and started stacking.

These were 3-ounce cans, which I would declare the perfect size for toddlers; I didn’t worry about them being too heavy if they fell. You can play this game with more standard 15-ounce cans, but if so I would recommend making sure your child has shoes on, in case of dropped items. Alternatively, play with larger cans that are empty, but then you’ll need to make sure you’ve duct-taped over any sharp edges.

Meanwhile, these little cat food cans did away with any of that prep work! She loved building high, and seeing how many she could stack. And then of course she loved the kaboom of knocking her towers over.

The game looked like so much fun that big brother Travis came over to join in. The kids had a competition to see who could stack higher of course!

Bigger kids might get fancier with their blocks creations, too.

After a while we even had “bulldozers” to help clean up the debris from our toppling can towers.

In sum, little cans make great “blocks” for small hands.