Building/construction toys - ds not keen on Lego...

[MiscellaneousAssortment]

Am just doing a big spring clean of all ds toys, and it occurs to me, he has not construction / building toys at he that he plays with.

I feel like I should be encouraging spacial awareness and all those skills!

I gave him some duplo Lego ages ago and he's never got on with it, to the point where I'm going to put it away.

I remember nursery saying he likes mega blocks and plays with them, but I don't know whether to buy him any for home or not?

He's just turned four and will be off to school in September, so is he too old to start buying mega blocks?

I guess I don't want to buy stuff that he's going to go off quickly, and a bit of me worries that by giving him too young toys, he might get teased at school (I know, mother paranoia, would not say this to anyone in real life!)

Mobilo !

Mine much prefer lego to duplo -DS2 turned 3 recently, and he has rejected duplo for his brothers lego.
They also like nursery's version of gears, they also like geomag sets

That mobilo looks good.

What skills are you wanting to promote? Building - in which case wooden blocks do the job, or fine motor skills, in which case would he like beads? Lego isn't essential you know looks round room, lego isn't essential in every house

Polydron!

I guess I'm looking to help him explore spacial awareness, understanding how objects for together in 3d, and balancing objects on each other,

He gets play for fine motor skills through other toys/ crafts/ activities, but just really nothing for spacial stuff. His fine motor skills are average, not amazing, and he hasnt got a good pencil grip going on like some of his peers. But i think that will come with time.

He loves playmobil and anything he can use his imagination with, and language.

I suspect he's just not that interested (does Lego loving not get passed on genetically?! :) ), but also there's an element of frustration / thinking he can't do it well going on.

He gets so frustrated when things don't quite do what he wants, and then abandons the whole thing. I think he finds duplo harder to fit together than the mega bloks, but I've never seen him play with the mega bloks to see why theyre more appealing to him. He has wooden building blocks, and again utterly uninterested.

I love all these type of toys, but unsure if he will. I wonder if it's the unstructured element of them, maybe he doesn't quite know how to play with them?

Maybe try the simple lego and do it together. My dd (5) has a lego book she looks at for inspiration, maybe that would help?
She likes stickle bricks as well, and k'nex kits because they have more than just bricks.
You can do buildy things without the toys. My dd loves building bridges by sticking dry spaghetti into playdoh and using all sorts to build across. Also loves making boats to float in the bath and stuff. So you can get a grip of balance/3d shapes by doing that as well?

DS is 3.8. He is really into construction toys but among his favourites are the marble helter skelter (he also likes taking this in the bath and running water down it) and a chunky wooden meccano style car/digger thing that you can make into various different vehicles.

This thread is like a candy shop for me!

Polygons, gears, sticklebricks (oh! Sticklebricks :) ), mobilo, marble runs...

I've just been browsing amazon in delight . Unfortuneately it's not for me but my hard to please little friend.

I think I'll try the marble helter skelter as its sufficiently different from the other building things to maybe break with his reluctance. And I'll put away the duplo for a while, give it a rest and bring it out again to play with him in a month or two. And if that doesn't work, I'll be working down the list on here!

Thanks so much everyone

I was just going to say marble runs. there is the motivation to hurl noisy marbles down them at the end.

My little boy is the same age and he loves Kid K'nex.

What about model building (and maybe painting it afterward). You can get wooden or plastic ones and you can get vehicles, buildings or animals. You can do it togther and you can get fairly simple (larger scale) ones for younger kids.

At home we have a small building set with small bricks and real cement (you have to mix it yourself) so it's an outdoor activity and not reusable, but good fun. You know you could actually build a small (real) wall with him. I did some pointing of an outside wall with my dad (I was 5). Mine was rubbish of course but nice of Dad to let me help (think my bits may have been tidied up a little after I went indoors)..

Maybe a little bit old for 4 years, but this looks good if you want to make something that actually does something interesting:

www.brightminds.co.uk/physics-and-forces-thames-and-kosmos-little-labs/p910

As a kid I had a motor boat kit which involved making a simple copper wire motor. It was very easy to do and felt great making a motor which worked and did propel the boat forwards, but I still managed to sink the boat!

Have to recommend Build It and Bloco from ELC. DS2 is 4 and loves both.