Castles and Blocks

Sadly, our summer break is quickly coming to an end!  We have spent our week doing as many fun things as possible!  We have visited the children's museum, gone to the park, taken a bike ride, had friends over, and spent a whole day at home just playing!

We have also spent a lot of time watching the Olympics!  Last weekend we were watching some of the Olympic events and my six year old asked me to play with him.  Since, the other two kids were taking a nap we decided it would be a good time to play with blocks and build a castle!  After all, we didn't have to worry about anyone knocking it over.

We started by building an entrance and a bridge.

We wanted to make it wider, but my son said, "I don't know how." Instead of arguing with him that there was no right or wrong way to do it I told him that I would build one side and he could "match" it. This made him think, but once he realized what he was doing he was excited to keep going.

This was the last picture that I got of our castle.  When my three year old woke up he was so excited and asked "How did you do that?" and believe it or not he didn't knock it over.  We left that to my six year old!

Speaking of castles, we love the Usborne Beginners book Castles by Stephanie Turnbull!  This is a great non-fiction read that has a TON of information about castles.  You can read about different types of castles, to knights and jousting, to castle life.  There is also a link to a website that takes you to fantastic websites about castles.  My six year old loved one of the games where you had to label parts of the castle, and later built a castle with all different parts like the keep, kitchen, and drawbridge!

These Usborne Beginners books are great for my six year old now and were also great two years ago when we bought them!  They are still too difficult for my son to read on his own, but are a great listening level for him!