Five builds for the first week

A box of tiles tipped on a rug is a heap until somebody shows what it does. These are the five we show first, in the order we show them. None of them needs a piece you would not find in a starter box.

One. The flat square

Lay four squares edge to edge on the floor and let the child feel them snap. That is the whole build. What it teaches is the thing every later build depends on: the edges pull, the faces do not. A three year old who has done this once stops trying to stack tiles like bricks.

Two. The box

Four squares standing in a ring, one lying on top. It falls over about four times before it does not, and the reason it falls is always the same: the base square is missing. Put a fifth square flat on the floor first and build the ring on it, and the whole thing holds.

Three. The house with a roof

The box from build two, then two triangles leaning together across the top. This is the first build that looks like something from across the room, and it is usually the one a child repeats for a week. Add a square laid flat as a garden and a triangle as a gate.

Four. The tall tower

Boxes stacked on boxes. Three high is easy, five is a project, and past that the base has to get wider or the tower leans. This is where the piece count starts to matter, and where a child works out on their own that a wide bottom holds more than a narrow one. Nobody has to say the word engineering.

Five. The thing with a story in it

Everything above is geometry. The build that keeps going is the one with a plot: a castle that needs defending, a garage with a road out of it, a nest for the dinosaurs. This is where our castle boxes and dinosaur boxes earn their place, because a jointed dinosaur gives the tower a reason to exist.

Once those five are in the hands, we stop suggesting. Everything after that is better than anything we would have thought of.