They were stacking the wooden planks as high as they would go.
“Do you know a block game called Jenga?”
One of them had played it and explained how it went.
So the tower they had just built became the thing to take apart. They played rock paper scissors, and the planks started coming back out of it.
They settled the turns between them, and the rules along with it.
They had been talking about trees that morning, and what trees give us. From there the talk moved to the blocks that are made of wood.
They stood the planks up in a line and knocked them over. Then they laid the planks out flat to spell their friends' names.
They wanted the falling recorded. An adult filmed it on a phone, and afterward they watched it together on the big screen.
A child came in that morning, picked up the wooden blocks, and sat down with them. The letters were up on the board, and they started laying the blocks out to match.
“The round one can't be made out of wooden blocks.”
An adult asked back.
“What if you made it with a different kind of block?”
They looked around the room, then went and brought some back.
“I can make it with these.”
Others came over.
“I want to make one too.”
They took the wooden blocks out and laid them along the floor one at a time.
“Let's make the house again!”
They brought over the food they had made out of clay, called the blocks a table, set the food along it, and pretended to eat together.
Later one of them stepped up onto a block.
“I'm going home now.”
The others saw it and climbed up too, and after that they were crossing from block to block, going home over stepping stones.
Some of them were crossing in socks, so an adult took the socks off.
An adult went through the other kinds of blocks they could build the house with. They said they only wanted the wooden ones, and that is what the house was made of.
It was raining, so they stayed in and built a train track out of the wooden blocks, working on it together.
Partway along, the track went crooked.
“If it's crooked the train can't get through.”
They talked it over and finished the track.
The day before they had built the outside of the building out of wooden blocks.
“Let's make the inside of our room too.”
They named the parts as they went — the room, the bathroom, the play areas — and divided the space up with blocks and whatever else was around.
Some of them had trouble stacking the small blocks neatly. An adult brought out the cardboard bricks, which stand more steadily, and left the choice to them. They each went on with the blocks that worked for them.
They decided to build a fishing spot out of blocks. Before starting, they split the jobs up themselves — some building the spot, some making the fish.
They gave the place a name, made a sign for it, and stuck the sign on the blocks. Then they put the fish inside and fished.
One of them had gone ice fishing with their grandfather and had liked it. They built ice out of the wooden blocks and took a hammer to it, breaking the blocks open to fish through.
“Ice fishing looks fun.”
After that the others were making ice out of blocks too. Later they split into teams, and whoever caught the most fish first won.
They were making the Great Wall of China out of wooden blocks, after looking at what it is like — long, and winding.
“The Great Wall has to be really long.”
“It bends here.”
“Next it has to go up like this.”
They put the blocks up one at a time. It fell over at first.
“Let's do it again.”
“This time let's stack more carefully.”
It took several tries. When the long winding wall was standing:
“We did it!”
“We really made it!”
The day before they had been looking at a globe, at buildings from countries around the world. An adult put pictures of the buildings up in the room, and they started making them out of blocks and whatever else was there.
One of them made the Eiffel Tower out of the wooden planks.
“Wow, it's exactly the same!”
“I want to make one too!”
“I'm making this one!”
Then there was the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
“How do you make this one?”
They talked it through and used paper plates and toilet paper tubes from the room, stacking carefully, working on it together.
When the building fell down an adult encouraged them, and they laughed and stacked it again.
They stood at the wall to work out what they were going to do. One of them put their back against it.
“I'll stand here.”
Another carried the wooden blocks over.
“Then let's stack it as tall as you, carefully.”
They went up from the floor, one block at a time.
“It's got to here.”
“It's still below your head.”
They kept looking from the blocks to the child at the wall and back again. When the stack wobbled:
“You have to stack really carefully.”
One of them held the blocks with a hand while another went on slowly. At shoulder height:
“It's almost the same now.”
“I think one more will do it.”
They put the last block on and looked from the child to the blocks.
“Wow, it's exactly the same.”
“Your height comes to here.”
Then they swapped, and someone else stood at the wall.
“I'll stand this time.”
“Will it be higher this time?”
They were playing at going to the movies. Tickets had to be bought, and buying one, they said, meant having a phone.
They grouped themselves into families, and an adult handed a bamboo block to whoever was the mom and the dad. They paid with it, and bought popcorn with it too.
The movie turned into a puppet show on the table. They set the table themselves and told the story.
An adult put out paper with wood printed on it. The older ones started wrapping the cardboard bricks in it.
“Now this is a wooden block.”
The younger ones wrapped theirs with help, and once the blocks were done they went up high and out sideways, making a space.
“This part is a valley.”
A younger child put a blue brick down inside it.
“This is the water.”
Then someone brought a toy watermelon over and set it on the blue.
“You have to put the watermelon in the water so it gets cold.”