I thought we had exhausted every possible game with Dienes blocks. Turns out we had barely scratched the surface.
Dienes blocks are a very flexible tool for developing a child’s thinking. To me, it’s hard to find another toy with this kind of range. We thought we had played every possible game and hit a creative wall. However, there were dozens more ideas we hadn’t tried yet.
Move into the house
For this game, you’ll need a set of Dienes blocks, paper, and markers. Draw a house with two rooms. In one room live all the small shapes, in the other all the large ones. Make sure you show the size with simple symbols.
You can also sort the house by colour. In the red room live all the red shapes, in the yellow room the yellow ones, and so on.
Once your child is comfortable with a single-storey house, move on to a two-storey house. On the first floor (show them clearly) live the small blocks, on the second all the big ones. In the first entrance live the yellow shapes, in the second the blue, in the third the red.
And then you can build a three-storey house. Three floors, four entrances. Help each “resident” find their room.
Find the way out of the forest
For this game, you’ll need markers, a large sheet of paper such as A3, and your Dienes blocks. Draw a forest, with a clearing in the centre, and paths leading out in different directions. On each path, draw colour symbols (yellow, blue, red).
Let your child help the blocks (or little piglets, if you like) find their way out of the forest. Explain that, for example, blue ones can only travel along the path marked with blue.
Now add a “not” sign by crossing out the blue circle. When your child tries to take a blue block along that path, explain that it can’t go there. That path is not for blue. But it is open to anything that is not blue. Try sending red and yellow blocks along it.
Once they get the idea, you can add more features—big and small, thick and thin, different shapes. You can also add more paths to make the challenge richer.
Good luck!
Get Dienes blocks here
Watch my video about attribute blocks