On the heels of a Book Box, today I kept Veronika busy during big brother’s school Zoom with a building bin! I kept this one very simple, initially filling a basket with three types of blocks: Duplo, alphabet blocks, and foam shape blocks.

Although she frequently plays with all of these, she hasn’t ever combined them. I was curious to see how she might mix and match.

Of course there were standard towers to build…

…but I also helped her form her name from the alphabet blocks. We could do this in two ways, either finding a block for each letter, or making a big version of her nickname.

She was most interested in discovering that block towers easily toppled, but not so her Duplo towers, because she could link the pieces.

She loved waving her big stack of Duplo around, almost marveling at how it didn’t break like other block towers do.

“Look what I made,” she proudly ran to tell me a few times. Of course she also just loved making little block castles in a more classic manner, and I gave her a “king” and “queen” to play with in her creations.

Later in the day, I did a quick rearrangement, this time filling the bin with a creative interpretation of “blocks”: individual toilet paper rolls and cans of cat food. Both of these make great toddler blocks because they’re small enough and/or soft enough not to hurt little toes.

At first she just stacked the toilet paper rolls. I showed her how to do this standing instead of sitting, so the tower grew taller than her head.

What a reach!

Then I demonstrated how she could alternate cat food tins with toilet paper.

She loved decorating the tops of her towers with cat food, almost like little castle decorations.

This version of the Building Bin kept her busy solo for quite some time.

Mission accomplished!