If you throw it on the floor, they will build.

In my teaching career, I focused on the sixth- to twelfth-grade set and never took any courses on early child development. My knowledge in that area has been of an on-the-job training sort. So, while I don't have the formal educational theories to back my approach to the development of the young child, I have some strongly held opinions on the right way to do things. One of my passionate beliefs in this area is that kids can never have enough opportunities to express themselves creatively. To this end, we have the requisite art supplies and sandbox tools, of course. Creative opportunity is most clearly witnessed in our house, however, in the area of building toys. We have them. We have A LOT of them. We have them everywhere. In the back of my mind, I think I should probably have the kids pick up one batch of toys before moving on to the next thing. On the other hand, who likes to be interrupted in the middle of a project? Meals go more smoothly if there's a promise of returning to the construction site of the moment after we're done eating. Toy types tend to blend, of course. Those big cardboard blocks often become the backbone to a kitchen design, pirate ship or maze. Currently, Erik's room contains Matchbox car highway system. Anna's room has a bristle-block empire. The baby's room is covered in wooden train tracks. (Hope you like, Thomas and James, Little Guy! Just be glad your brother wants to share.) The living room sports the Lego collection and the basement is a minefield of Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys. Oh and the family room is a mix of toy food and Duplo blocks. It makes for a tedious clean up at the end of the day, but if some new synapse connections have been made, it's worth it, I hope.

Pondering our mix of kid creations, there are two areas that send me into a tizzy when I see other families take a different approach. It's the train tracks and the Lego bricks. Being basically cheap, I've added to Erik's wooden train collection via second-hand sources. Every time I find a listing on Craig's List from a family bragging that they glued the tracks to the train table to make life easier for parents and less frustrating for kids, I have a fit. Of course, it's frustrating. Especially when Erik was a toddler and he couldn't touch the trains without knocking over a bridge and crying, it was maddening. Yet, when he decided to give up napping and I let him play trains in his room during "quiet time" his skills improved drastically. He can now slap together a layout hat would make civic planners proud. (To be honest, I think I hear Anna sneaking into baby's room to play trains right now. If she doesn't want to sleep and it keeps her quiet, I think I'm going to let it happen.) As for Legos, whenever I hear of a family that builds a Lego kit then puts it back in the box, I want to cry. We get Lego sets because the picture on the front is interesting, but after that first build and a few hours of messing with the constructed thing, it comes apart and joins the communal Lego bin. The fire truck becomes so much more interesting when elements of the helicopter get added on. Last week's rain prompted me to dig out my old Lego collection. (Yes, I'm a girl with a Lego collection that I've kept for thirty years. My family is just that awesome!) Briefly, I considered keeping my Legos separate for rainy day purposes. (See previous post on my hang-up about "my" stuff.) Then Erik declared my Legos better -- just because they were new, I know. Anna collected all the minifigs and made various tiny tableaux. I happily built the house and the London bus that I used to love and Jamieson dove into the space pieces to relive his youth. It was family-bonding heaven! And when all the sets get mixed together and become one giant tower, well, so much the better!

There's the story of Frank Lloyd Wright's mother buying a set of special, geometrically-shaped blocks so her son could develop the talents she so wanted to see him realize. Now, I fervently hope my kids develop better people skills than Ol' Frank, but if any of them want to be Lego designers, that would be delightful. Really, I just want them to learn how to think. And clean up.