Wooden Blocks - Barclay Blocks for Children (free catalog)

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Wooden Blocks
from
Barclay
Blocks

!!Valentines Sale!!

Thru Tuesday, Feb 9th
20-35% off all Block Kits

Here!

Finding Stuff
The best way to navigate this site is by studying the menu on the left. Scroll down and see all the places you can go before going any further. Click on the words or arrowhead to go there. This menu will appear on every page and there is little need to use the "back" button to move from place to place.

What We Sell
Our Indiana company manufactures and sells classic, school size children's unit blocks made of premium American Rock Maple. Our blocks are laboratory tested by independent laboratories for safety, and satisfy the conditions of CPSC and the CPSIA. We make kits designed for homes and individuals, and we make kits for schools. We also sell Booster Kits for augmenting an existing kit and we sell Open Stock so you can buy one piece at a time or whatever mix of blocks you want to buy - including many special pieces that are not found elsewhere. And we also sell Uncle Goose Alphabet Blocks in 15 different languages. All of our Unit Building Blocks are the same scale - the 1-3/8 modulus typically found in schools. Our Alphabet Blocks are 1-3/4 cubes.

Building Blocks

kids playing with wooden blocks
(Our little genius)

Homes and Individuals
Our kits for individuals are balanced to give your little genius the blocks we think are appropriate for various ages. These kits have a wide range of pieces in order to build progressively more complicated structures. We think that most people with younger children will benefit from buying a starter kit and then adding to it over the years rather than trying to buy all of the necessary blocks at the same time. It's particularly helpful if you build with your children in order to understand their challenges in building. We sell Booster Kits and Open Stock so you can customize a kit. Almost any combination of pieces is possible. We also supply American made Alphabet blocks in an extended range of languages.

(#2 Genius)

School Kits
School Kits are quite large, but have an attenuated range of shapes. Typically they have been designed for pre-school, kindergarten, and first grade - a bit on the young side for real builders. We have listed most of the kits we find mentioned in common texts about Block Play written by such authors as Hirsch, Wellhousen and Kieff, and Newburger and Vaughan. We also sell bulk packs of specific pieces if you need to augment a school kit. If your school or state requires a specific set, please contact us for a price.

We also supply American made Alphabet blocks in an extended range of languages including Braille and American Sign Language (ASL).

Real Person
There's one, sure-fire way to get our attention right away: to ask a question, to correct a problem, or to clarify an issue - use e-mail (contact). But we realize there are pesky questions that bother buyers and we want to answer them - so pick up the phone and talk directly to the boss. We can't always answer, but we will return your call. You can also order over the phone if you are concerned about divulging your credit card info.

1-877-606-4374 (toll free)

Block Projects

Here are some examples of things children can make with Building Blocks. If you have some pictures of things your children have made, we'd love to add them to our gallery. These projects may require some pieces from open stock, but they are illustrative of the sorts of things that children can do starting around five or six years old.

Block Projects

Weekly
Special

Weekly Special
Every week we randomly put one or two of our kits on special sale to give you a rock bottom price. Check here to see our weekly specials.

Free(ish) Scrap
20 Lb. Boxes of Scrap. The perfect thing for art teachers, crafters, or others able to use random cut-offs and scrap block pieces. This is clean, unsorted scrap from manufacturing blocks and is the perfect thing for teachers or others engaged in free form creations. The material takes paint well. You pay for a small handling charge and shipping.

Click here for our free scrap

Make Your Own

Make Your Own Children's Blocks
Okay . . . so you've been cluttering up the basement with that Radial Arm Saw for years, and promising to make a Gazebo since the "Evil Empire" speech. Fish or cut bait. Here's how to make a set of unit blocks.

United Kingdom

Shipping Building Blocks

We ship most orders via UPS the day they are received. Expect to receive your blocks in five working days or less in the Continental US. We ship to Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and most other countries by Priority Mail (10 days). We utilize Flat Rate shipping whenever possible.

1-877-606-4374 (toll free)

Canada

Catalog

Wooden Blocks Catalog
Use this page to order our new catalog. This can be obtained by filling out the form on the Catalog Page. There is nothing in the catalog that is not right here on the Internet . . and a great deal here, that is not in the catalog. But for Internet tyros, it sometimes helps to have some paper. And a catalog is a great way to suggest an appropriate gift to the "Grands." Regrettably, we cannot send catalogs outside of North America. If you write to us, however, we can sometimes be persuaded to reconsider.

Pictures of Children's Block Projects
Some of my smaller friends provided pictures of their favorite architecture credits. These pictures can give you some idea of what can be made with a set of blocks in creative hands. Be sure not to miss the "Ocarina Hall o' Fame" or "Homage to Squid." (click right).

Block Projects

Famous
Buildings

Pictures of Famous Buildings
Here are some pictures of famous buildings for your builder to render in blocks (click left). On these pages you will find numerous pictures that can be copied for school reports and architectural projects. These pictures are in the public domain.

Recipes
The days have passed when we gave our wooden blocks away in used onion bags, but the government now requires testing toys for lead and phthalates and so we have discontinued the bags. Go here to copy our bang-up recipe for Salsa or our Mango Chutney. Got an condiment recipe we can use? We'd like to hear about it.

Recipes

Links

Links
Here are some sites that feature pictures of architects and architecture, other gift and toy sites, and some sites devoted to early childhood education. There are some amazing people on the Internet making stuff. Be sure and visit here if you like toys.