Wooden building blocks...not just for littles!

Several years ago I splurged on some wooden Kapla blocks.  It felt a little strange to be purchasing wooden blocks, seeing that my youngest was about 9 at the time.

These aren't your ordinary blocks, though. The planks are precision cut and identical in size, making for some very stable building pieces.  They are still a great source of entertainment, even though my kids are now almost 12 and 14.  My son had a friend over the other day and this is what they came up with:

Pretty cool, eh?  My son (on the left) stands about 4'-10", just so you get an idea of how tall this tower is.  I think they used all 1000+ pieces we own.

After his friend left, my kids decided to make a giant Jenga game out of the tower.  If you aren't familiar with Jenga, a (much smaller) tower is built of wooden pieces and opponents slowly remove a piece while trying to keep the structure from falling.  Whomever collapses the tower loses the game.

They found they had to remove quite a few to even get the structure to budge.

Soon the bottom collapsed, but the structure was still standing.

Just a couple more...

Down comes the rest! Unfortunately my camera didn't capture much of the exciting fall. Though you can see the delight it created!

Great fun for a tween and teen, no?  It sure beats video games!

Unfortunately, they no longer sell this particular brand in the U.S.  I have since seen other brands that are very similar.  I have a feeling my kids will be coming home from college and will still build with these blocks!