Legos or Megabloks : Which one to buy for your toddler?

Building blocks are a very important toddler toys which can help in enhancing a lot of skills like :

• motor skills
• hand-eye coordination
• spatial reasoning
• cognitive flexibility
• language skills
• a capacity for creative, divergent thinking
• social competence
• engineering skills

Check this link for a detailed post on benefits of toy blocks.

The confusion of either to buy Megabloks or Legos as your toddler’s first set of building blocks can be very confusing. When I had to decide which ones to start with, I could not find any suggestions or help on the internet comparing the two. So I thought of penning down my experience in a blog post and I hope it will help you decide which one to go for.

Megabloks: 

Pros:

• These are chunky blocks perfect for little hands to hold and work with them.
• Can be introduced from 1+ year on wards.
• These are more Waldrof based, as they don’t have a theme as such and your child is free to imagine and create his own creations.
• The colors are bright and I feel younger children would pick these up over Legos.
• They are safe enough for the little ones coming from a trusted brand Fisher-Price.

Cons:

• The blocks are loose, mostly the single ones, it can irritate the kids who are trying to build towers. The towers with Megabloks will not stand sturdy and will topple down when the child tries to build taller towers.  This is one major con of Megabloks due to which I am not a big fan of them.

Legos: 

Pros:

• Legos are very well made and only with a first look at them, you will fall in love with these superior quality blocks.
• They are super sturdy, they snugly fit with a click sound which is very satisfying for the kids.
• Legos are more organized and have a theme for each of their sets, so the child has a clear idea on what to build out of the blocks and then create his own story around it.
• Legos are definitely for older kids.
• Lego is much better quality wise and looks great in the nursery.

Cons:

• Very Expensive.

Our experience:

At 20 months, Raisha is only interested in joining the blocks of the same sizes and she is loving Megabloks currently as it has more blocks but she does get frustrated with the loose blocks (not all blocks are loose) She imagines her creations to be a baby, a cake, a phone etc. and that is why I say it is Waldorf based as it enhances their imagination and creative skills.

My recommendation:

Start with Megabloks and gradually move to Legos.

You can start by introducing Megabloks to your 1 plus kid, go for the very basic set of 60 blocks. The 60 blocks set would be sufficient and also has better variety of blocks than in the 250 blocks set.

Once the kid starts building towers out of different sized Megabloks, he will be ready for more structured play with Legos.

Hope this was helpful, please leave your comments sharing your experiences.