Stacking blocks is great for a toddler’s fine motor skills, but some materials can lead to the occasional owie. Here’s a way to make the biggest, softest towers ever: pillow “blocks”!

After cleaning the living room this morning, all the couch pillows were on the ground, which immediately had me thinking we needed to play with them before restoring the room to order. We added a few extra pillows from the bedroom and I showed Veronika how to stack them one atop the other.

She proudly added the final pieces.

And then couldn’t resist jumping atop the pile…which is exactly what I was hoping for. “Cozy!” she said.

Then we stacked them up and did it again.

This tower never got very tall, because either she was tempted to knock those pillows down…

…or wanted to throw her whole body into the mix.

All of which confirmed my hunch that pillows make the perfect stacking blocks for toddlers.