Constructive Playthings provided the architectural unit blocks you see below, to facilitate this review.  However, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own (and those of my children).

We love the Constructive Playthings catalog/website.  It’s an entire catalog devoted to (duh) constructive playthings.  In other words, almost everything in the catalog is something we would be thrilled to have in our home.

We’ve been wanting some architectural unit blocks since way back when we got our regular unit blocks, so we were excited to get the chance to try these out.

Architectural unit blocks can be used alone.  But they’re not really meant to be used that way.  They’re meant to be used in conjunction with more basic blocks, to add elements that aren’t present in (or aren’t easy to build with) the regular set(s).

As you can see, we have things like spires, arches, columns, lattice work – and steps.  Believe it or not, my children were most excited about having steps!  They exclaimed over these, as soon as they saw the picture on the box!

The picture at the top of this post is just the blocks from this set.  Below, you can see what the girls built the first time they put the blocks to use with their other blocks.

See, one great thing about unit blocks (sometimes called kindergarten blocks) is that they’re standardized.  The “unit” of unit blocks is always the same.  So it doesn’t matter where they come from or what brand they are, they will all work together.  So even though our original unit blocks are Melissa & Doug, these work together with them beautifully.

(There are those steps again!)  Unit blocks are also great for teaching fundamental math skills.  The basic concept of a unit block is that every block is build around a particular “unit” – everything else is proportional to it.  This means children internalize concepts like multiples, fractions, equivalents, etc. just by playing.  They may not have names for these concepts, but they see them at work.

Do you have other favorite classic toys?