Make some easy, DIY patterned wood blocks for babies, toddlers and preschoolers to enjoy building with! These make a lovely addition to the construction play box and would be such a nice and frugal gift idea for a small child. An older sibling could make these all by themselves!

DIY Patterned Wood Blocks:

We are big fans of block play and we have many types of construction materials over-flowing from baskets around the house. Most babies and young toddlers start out with wooden blocks as their first adventures into building, deigning and construction, which eventually leads onto Lego and more fiddly sets wit smaller pieces. I love the look and feel of the traditional wood blocks and we have collected quite a few over the years!

I am also a huge fan of patterned and coloured washi tapes (my new crafting weakness) and thought it would be fun to re-purpose one of our older sets of plain wood blocks into a coloured and patterned set for baby boy to enjoy.

[Amazon affilate links]

Decorating the blocks was a fun activity in and of itself and my 4 year old loved helping me select the tapes and wrap them around each one. She did plenty of these all by herself and it was fun to work together on a project.

We simply stuck the patterned washi tape (which is thin and paper-like, very easy to work with and to remove) around each block, and aimed to make equal numbers in each colour and pattern set.

Miss 4 then enjoyed sorting them into “families” and building her own playgrounds and houses for her mini figures and tiny teddy to enjoy climbing on. We talked a little about solid shape names and some of their properties, such as how cylinders can roll yet none of the others can, and why that might be. This is a nice and playful way to introduce maths concepts to young children.

Baby boy has liked looking at and working with these patterned blocks on a small table, where he could reach the table top and manipulate the blocks easily. Of course, his favourite activity is to knock down the towers and structures after others have built them, as this is the stage of development he is at! We have been building them especially for this purpose and letting him explore what happens. Cue lots of giggles!

These would be SO sweet if put into a small basket or a plain material draw-string bag and given as a gift! You could search the charity shops or boot sales for old blocks or Jenga sets, which work just as well.

See all our TODDLER PLAY and BABY PLAY ideas from the archives (there are LOTS!)

Follow our TODDLER PLAY board over on Pinterest.

[This post contains Amazon affiliate links. Thank you for your support!]