- Brickadoo
- RS2Play, $18 to $20 a kit
Sure, your kids can build a decent house with standard wooden blocks, but that playtime creation would look a lot more like a real brick-and-mortar building if they used, well, real bricks and mortar. Brickadoo is the closest they can get to genuine construction, if on a decidedly smaller scale. Each of the nine Dutch-made building sets—from the house (shown) to the fire station to the charming dormered "villa"—comes with little white-clay bricks, wooden doors and windows, and nontoxic cement powder (just add water). Laying brick on brick and spreading the adhesive in between gives kids a hands-on lesson in how edifices go up. And the cement is water-soluble, so not only are spills easy to clean, but the mini domicile can be dismantled and reconfigured at will. The process does require precision and manual dexterity that are likely beyond very young children—but for handy older ones, Brickadoo offers a truly different style of construction play. —Ages 6 and up
