Build a House!

A couple of days ago when Rick was taking care of Dashiell, Dash started obsessing over his wooden blocks.  He's had these blocks for well over a year, and has progressed from stacking a couple, knocking them down, having us build bigger stuff that he can knock it down, using various blocks to mimic other objects (one of the blocks made a great phone!), to forgetting that he had them.  Then out of the blue he started playing with them again.  But now he's progressed to building "houses".  Most of his houses are horizontal in nature, though he'll occasionally stack the blocks to form vertical elements.  I'm totally in love with the creations he comes up with!  "Build a house" he'll say, then run over and rearrange the blocks to make some cool-looking block picture. 

We're not exactly sure where this new-found creativity stems from, but I strongly suspect it has something to do with a library book we recently picked up called "Shape by Shape" by Suse MacDonald.  The book uses a variety of cut-out shapes to create a dinosaur, and I think that triggered something in his brain that made him realize that shapes can be used to make any number of pictures, such as houses!  In fact, he has picked up blocks, named their shapes, then said "Like Shape by Shape!" (hence my suspicion that this book has something to do with the houses!).

Cool, huh?  I think it might be time to make another trip to Michael's store see what other crafting opportunities can be found...a world of fuzzy felt and colored paper awaits!