Bildopolis: A Great New Building Set, and a Giveaway!
************This giveaway is now closed!!!!!******************
Recently I discovered a large scale building set that surpasses anything my children have used up until now. It’s called Bildopolis and it’s made of pieces of sturdy recycled cardboard with Velcro dots for connecting the pieces together.
Using squares, rectangles, and triangles, children can create an endless amount of structures. While they are playing with Bildopolis, they are strengthening their critical thinking skills, spatial awareness, and ability to create in three dimensions.
I love what John Smith, the creator of Bildopolis, has to say about the benefits of free play:
“We want kids to learn without being ‘taught’. We think that every day is an education for kids and things that they learn through play are the strongest and most memorable lessons.”
John was kind enough to send our family a Big Bilder set so that we could try it out for this review.
My kids eagerly opened the box and began building. Immediately they were able to see the potential – you can literally build 1000s of different structures. My kids aimed to build one of the structures shown on the box, with, in their words, “a few modifications, mom.”
After they were done, I asked each of my children to tell me what they thought of Bildopolis. Here’s what each child had to say:
My son, 11: I found it really easy to build a tall tower. I liked that the pieces were easy to change around. It works best if two people build together. I did notice that the “door” in one of the squares is too small for me, so only smaller kids could use it as a door.
My daughter, 8: It’s really fun and you can make a lot of different ideas. The set comes with a lot of great parts. I made my own house, and I was surprised at how light it was – my mom picked it up with one finger! I can’t believe how much you can make, just with cardboard!
Here’s some great news: Bildopolis is providing one FREE Big Bilder set to one of you!
PLEASE NOTE: The prize ships to the US only. International readers, if you have a relative or friend that lives in the US who could accept the package for you, please feel free to enter!
The details:
• PRIZE: A Big Bilder set from Bildopolis (an $80 value)
• TO ENTER: Leave a comment on this post (not on Facebook); ONE comment per person
• BONUS QUESTION FOR COMMENT: What is your favorite construction toy?
• GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Sunday, March 11th (my birthday!) at midnight CST
• NUMBER OF WINNERS: One
• PRIZE SHIPS: US only
Winner will be chosen by random.org and posted Monday morning, March 12th.
Please note: As the website states, Bildopolis is for ages 6+, and while structures built with Bildopolis are sturdy, they should not be climbed on, only played in.
I enjoy legos because they are versatile.
I played with Tinker Toys growing up. They really made us use our imagination.
This looks like so much fun. Thank you for introducing it and for the giveaway. My kids really like playing with LEGOs.
For younger kids I love cloth blocks, but for older kids Legos are best. Thanks!
I love building with lincoln logs. They were so much fun to build little towns or cities.
Looks like tons of fun. We use legos and city blocks mostly, really changes a lot though. They go through all the block that we have.
Legos are so popular for most of the children even for my own, they enjoy using their imagination to build simple and complex things, and bildopolis will be great for them.
Neatoooo! I could see hours of play and imagination for my students!
My son is crazy over Lego. I’m sure he’d flip out over these!
I built forts with trees, branches and rope! My “fort tree” still stands on our family farm. I have shared it with my children who are by all accounts “city kids”. There is no better building block than nature. City kids and farm kids agree.
I think this is just amazing for kids to be able to build with! My favorite construction toys are the foam shape blocks, as they are soft so kids won’t get hurt and they don’t make too much noise when they fall, along with the fact that they can be built into anything the kids want.
I really enjoyed K’NEX and old fashioned building blocks with my children…hours and hours of pure enjoyment!
We love Legos! So far, our kids re only old enough for duplos, but my husband is eager to do the little ones sometime! These blocks look really, really fun!
Looks like fun!!! Thanks for sharing!
Wow what a neat product. I could see my son loving this. He is so into forts, camps and Legos. This would give him tons of freedom to create and build. My favorite toy is Lego as it allows you to build with endless imagination.
Wow! This looks like a lot of fun, and I think our boy/girl twins would love this! The squares, rectangles, and triangles would be great in teaching them how to learn to build objects with these shapes. I really like that it’s open-ended and doesn’t require them to learn one way to do or use something, and it’s made from 40% recycled-content cardboard and recyclable nylon! Their favorite construction toys are also Legos.
However, our children are only almost 19 months old so this would not be appropriate for them. If I were to get this, I would give it as a gift to my 8-year-old nephew. He lost his mother (my sister) when he was 4 when she died, and his father thinks that playing war games is appropriate for him. I’d like to see him do something more than that and to explore his creativity more. I don’t think I’ve seen him do much of anything constructive sadly.
What a neat set! — I love that it is BIG!
We enjoy KEVA Planks when we go to the Building Museum, Magna-tiles and Lego at home. We’ve always wanted big hollow blocks.
This looks great our preschoolers would love it. My fav construction is the good old blocks there is endless things you can build and do with them
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this idea! My daughter would be over the moon to play with/in this intelligent toy.
this would be a wonderful addition to my classroom. I have a set of blocks, a set of interlocking shapes, and a set of legos right now and they are used and loved by all the students. When I was young, I remember my grandmother had a little wagon that she would roll out of the hall closet. It had colorful wooden blocks and I loved building with them.
We love all Lego things here! Great giveaway! What fun!
My sons and I love to build together.
We would love to win this set!
We usually build with Lego here at present.
My son has been thinking about something like this lately; he has a great imagination coming up and writing stories and I know if we win this set, it’s going to be very inspiring for him.
We love bristle blocks for building!
That looks very interesting, the kids in my school will love it!!!
I’m still a bit old school and love to build with Lincoln Logs, the wooden ones of course!
Having 2 boys I’d have to say Lego but Zoob comes in a very close second.
Looks like tons of fun! My kids love building with boxes, blankets, and furniture to create forts. This will allow even more fun! Smaller scale, they’re into Legos. My favorite was tinker toys.
Looks like a great set!
Good old blocks are our favorite!
The Big Builder looks great! My daughter loves to play with “Creative Blocks” .
So cool! My kids are vivacious builders and use whatever they can get their hands on. Of course, Legos, Keva planks and magnetic tiles are used but sticks, yarn and tin foil show up too. Love the Velcro idea and that it is BIG.
these look awesome fun….. given that plain old cardboard boxes did it for us as kids!
As a Montessori teacher, I saw how the 3-4 yr olds loved the wooden blocks. The older kids liked the legos and were always creating ships. The lincoln logs are also popular with the older children since they like build log cabins with roofs. My son is 23 yrs old and still has all his lego sets. He plays with the younger relatives, showing them how to make spaceships. These huge blocks look so much fun for the classroom and home.
At our preschool the children enjoy building large structures with PVC pipes/connectors, and then tossing silks/sheets over it for “walls”. This set will give them more privacy within their buildings!
This looks like awesome fun for my son. He is just now getting into building items, even though he is a teenager. Thanks for this contest.
I think the Legos in our house are the most timeless and versatile toy we own. This set looks great because they are building BIG things. My dad used to bring home big furniture boxes that we cut doors and windows in to make houses.
I love to see toys with an educational purpose! This one looks like great fun!
I will be homeschooling my 2 children for the first time this coming school year. My 6 year old daughter loves to build with anything, this would be an incredible start to our year. She loves to play with LEGOS now.
I can see my kids loving this and playing with it for hours.
This is amazing! Growing up my dad worked in construction and would always bring home cardboard boxes. They were our favorite thing to play in! My daughter’s favorite construction play thing is tables and chairs with blankets draped over them.
I just watched the video on their site and I think it’s fantastic! My 4 1/2 year old son loves to build and I am certain he would love this! Thanks for the chance at this giveaway!
Our favorite constructions toys are Mega Bloks, Duplos, and Citiblocs. These are the most used toys in our home.
My brother, sister and I were outside most days. We threw sheets over the clothesline and made structures out of branches and leaves. In the winter, we made snow houses.
Wow! This looks great! We love wedgits and duplos.
We like old fashioned tinkertoys or duplos for building.
Wow – I feel completely inspired and excited about the possibilities of this for my son and daughter and our homeschooling days. My children spend so much of their days building structures and cubby houses form everything and anything they can find, as they immerse themselves in their imaginative play.
I loved to make my own toys from what ever I can find around the house. Building something was much more fun then. This is a great product I love it.
These are so neat! I was always partial to lincoln logs growing up. I don’t know…something about them reminded me of Laura Ingalls Wilder and “Little House in The Big Woods.”
Wow, this looks great! My children love to build with cardboard – in fact we let them have old boxes and they build all sorts of things with them.
These look great. My favorite building toys are the simple wooden blocks. My daughters used to mix the blocks with Jenga blocks to make something bigger.
Growing up in Africa, our building blocks were my parents couch cushions and pillows. Who needs a toy when you can build a fort with big pillows. Necessity is the mother of invention.
I have just been online looking for interesting and impressive building toys. This looks great!
Magnatiles keep my kids busy and their imaginations run wild! They have just come out with similar wood magnetic blocks–
Sounds like so much fun and a great way to build on creativity and practical skills. My daughter does legos but also likes to stack things like kleenex boxes and knock them down.
Awesome! We love the big cardboard building blocks & of course legos
I love Lincoln Logs! This would be so awesome in my classroom!!
We love wooden blocks and legos. Wooden blocks crash down so satisfyingly.
I like legos. There are so many different sets to build.
The ruling building toy in our house is the set of manga tiles! They play forever with those and even though they cycle through the waffle blocks, wooden blocks, Legos, Lincoln logs, etc, they always come back to the magna tiles! The bildopolis set actually looks like a life size magna tile creation the way that the pieces attach
I love the potential that this toy has for creativity! My kids have loved k-nex, legos and wooden blocks the most!
So far we have regular wooden blocks and legos and both my sons enjoy building with those.
We’re loving Lincoln Logs and CitiBlocs at the moment!
What a great idea! I have to say I always enjoyed legos for building but after my Montessori training I got a Pink Tower as a birthday present and some plain wooden blocks… there is no age to how much fun one can have!
We always used straw bales in the hay mow when I was growing up!
Awesome learning fun for kids! Thanks for posting and sharing! We’ll love a set in our homeschool :=)
Looks like fun, don’t think I can afford it for my son. Thanks for sharing.
Looks awesome!!! My children (6 and 4) are always building things with cardboard, this would be so great for them!!!!
Silvina
Wow! What an exciting giveaway! I hope I win. lol Our family loves Legos, my husband still has his big box of legos from when he was a child and now our children get to enjoy them. We have slowly been collecting different toys that connect to make different objects but legos are by far our favorite. Thank you for sharing this great giveaway and hope you have a wonderful birthday.
-Vanity
These look amazing! We love the Imaginarium foam blocks, Legos (regular and Duplo), and creating various different train track set-ups for Thomas and friends. And blankets! Blanket forts are the best!
This looks like so much fun!!! I enjoyed legos as a child and building my own cardboard houses – but this is so much cooler!
That looks really cool!
I love creative toys for children. Thanks for sharing.
These look amazing! Favorites at our house are legos and wooden blocks! Thank you!
Looks great
We love lego.
What a great giveaway! My son and I love playing and building with Kapla blocks.
Love nature. building forts outside with whatever we can find. My kids love it too, although they like to take sheets etc from inside to add to to the creative forts they make.
The boys would LOVE this set…they would be so excited to build so BIG!
Hands down one of the best purchases I’ve made as a mom was our set of unit blocks from Community Playthings.
http://www.communityplaythings.com/products/blocks/unitblocks/index.html
My son would love these! They look like so much fun. My favorite building stuff was tinker toys. I would spend hours with them!
I like the K’nex – my kids love them. But the ultimate favorite is Lincoln Logs. Thanks for offering this giveaway!
Our favorite building/construction toy? Legos, of course! We have huge tubs of them in our basement. One of the boys used them just recently to me make me an iphone docking station.
Thanks for the great give-away!
Bildopolis will allow children to use the materials in an open-ended way–the best kind of play! As a child, I liked digging and constructing structures and play-areas outside.
My favorite toy was the DIY version of these: large appliance boxes. There was endless joy for my brother and I in our refrigerator box kingdom!
My son loves Legos and has been building with them for years, the new bildopolis building set sounds amazing. I wish we had these when I was a kid!
My kids would love this! My favorite building item is of course Legos!! You can build anything out of them things!
Favorite building toy…Hands down Lego!
This building toy looks super fun and very creative! Would love to try it out with my preschoolers!
Lego.
My kids favorite building toy at the moment are magna-tiles: triangular and square magnetic tiles. These seem like un-magnetized life-size version of the same! Seems like a great toy!
Enter me!! My boys would LOVE this!
Legos are very popular at our home….and so are the wooden blocks, those are so classic!
Looks like a lot of fun.I know my son would love this!Thanks for hosting this giveaway,Lori.
This looks incredibly awesome! My sister and I used to build with blankets and sheets when we were young. My kids make forts under their beds with pillows and stuffies.
My daughter would LOVE this!
Log Builders( back in the day Lincoln Logs) I would build structures and add plastic horses. My imagination was endless how I played with the log builders.
Awesome! I used to love constructs (sp?) We would build huge buildings then add the flotation tubes to the bottom and see if it would float. (It very rarely did!)
Thank you Montessori for Everyone! My favorite toy to build with was snap blocks!
My son loved Legos and K’nex. I LOVED tinker toys when I was a child! This is a very cool concept as a building toy.
Love the buildopolous idea.
My favorite building toy is mechano
Wow, awesome! It’s hard to say who would love this more – me or my kids!
This would be such a hit at our house! We’d all have fun with it.
These look absolutely awesome! We love the tried and true legos at our house but also have a good time with cardboard bricks. When we were kids my sisters and I loved to make forts out of the couch cushions and pillows!
Yay!
love the contest!! We love legos and our wood blocks
A cardboard box. My father occasionally would bring home a large cardboard box from where he worked. It quickly became a boat in which I sailed the seas, fighting pirates or searching for new lands. Or perhaps it was a spaceship that took me to far off planets. Or maybe a fort, car or a little house. To this day, the smell if cardboard floods my memory of how thoughtful my Dad was to recognize that his daughter had an active imagination, and boy oh boy did those boxes ever exercise it.
My favorite construction toy is a glue gun!
I really enjoy watching my daughter build with the natural tree blocks. We are also a huge Lego and Lincoln Log family. I guess we like to build!
We love building with all sorts of things here. Lego, straws and connectors, and big boxes are the consistent favorites. I know my kids would LOVE this set!
This set looks so neat, my boys would love it! Right now their favorite building toy is rokenbok.
This is the type of learning toy that is appealing to multiple ages of creativity (including adults)
My daughter loves wooden blocks (as I did when I was her age) and I look forward to introducing lego into her work once her little sister stops putting everything in her mouth. I love taking a cardboard box and developing a new plaything for her. 3d work is fun for the whole family to build together!
Last summer we did a Construction Production and Instruction Camp and it was a great hit. This would be wonderful to add to the materials for building.
I could play with Legos all day long. My Lower elementary students would love them!
When I was young, we built with chairs, blankets, boxes, and so on. My childen loved Lego, and my son has passed on all his Lego bricks to his 3 sons. Lego seems to be timeless.
As a Montessori teacher, I love providing open ended materials in my classroom that encourage imagination and creative thinking skills. I am always amazed at the childs ability to improvise and create. I can see this set being a huge asset to the classroom.
This building set sounds great! I like the amount of possibilities!
These are awesome! Hope to win them for my little boy!
Would love to win this! My oldest really enjoys just building with regular wooden blocks! And, my youngest likes trying to build with duplo blocks!!
Wow, what an awesome idea! Our family would love this. We can often be found making cities out of Duplos.
These look great! My son loves Legos.
Thank you for the giveaway
I grew up with Baufix, loved the wood and practicing with all the tools.
My kids would LOVE this! They really enjoy making forts.
Wow! This is awesome!!!!
I love Tinker Toys!
My entire family would really enjoy playing with this! Wonderful!
I run a home daycare provider and the kids (and my own son) have sooo many blocks but not anything like this. They do LOVE huge giant cardboard boxes though. I LOVE them too because they can use their imagination! Though they also love their duplos too!
My kids make forts out of anything! Large boxes. Chairs and sheets. Bed and sheets. They would love this!
I loved linkin’ logs when I was little.
What an awesome giveaway! Our favorite construction toy right now are Guidecraft’s Rainbow blocks.
These look great! I think Legos are the most versatile but also enjoy wedgits and kinects
cool. i am sure kids will love this!
This is amazing! Looks like so much fun!
My favorite construction toys are beautiful wooden preschool blocks! Hours of fun!
Great giveaway! My kids enjoy bristle blocks!
These look amazing! My kids both love legos, but a favorite has always been Kapla blocks. Thanks for offering these to the community!
These look amazing! I loved using cardboard boxes as a child to built “forts,” but these seem to take those boxes into the 21st century!
That house/castle loos so neat! My toddler really enjoys building with pegs and stacking cups! My preschooler really enjoys her bamboo blocks building set with pandas!
This is terrific! I can only imagine the forts and castles that could be built in my house. Thank you.
When I was young, my grandparents had some old school Lincoln logs. We loved them!
This looks like so much fun for both children and adults. I’ll be right there with my 5 year old building if we get it!
Looks like fun, my preschoolers would luv it!
Thanks for the giveaway we are crazy about lego and playdough in our house.
The children in my class love tangrams or similar polygon design building materials…especially the colorful ones….infinite posiibilities!
My Kids would love this. We love common sense activities like this that truly build the child’s imagination and skills at the same time. They play longer with objects like this than store bought toys. We will be homeschooling this year. This would be great for my kids.
Wow – this is awesome… We love legos, of course, but also love Wedgits for building.
Looks like so much fun! We love building with wooden blocks, legos and tinkertoys over here.
My children enjoy building with the couch cushions. Legos are also very popular right now, although the architect blocks are gaining interest. This building set looks like a wonderful addition for fort-sized construction.
We love the old-fashioned wooden blocks and tinker toys (but i like tinker toys the most!). This bildopolis looks amazing!!
Love this idea! My kids love making forts to do their school work in.
I love to build with lego
I love to build with blocks,
Pebbles are all the rage right now
they are easier than rocks.
I suppose my dream and utter bliss
would be to have fun with Bildopolis!
x
That is really Cool!
My son loves to build with materials found around the house. Cardboard boxes. tubes. anything he can find! We are also fans of legsos, lincoln logs and blocks, but somehow the found materials always show up in his projects!
I think creating design build projects are such valuable process lessons. Having a tangible outcome is the cherry on top. To think I started with a canvas bag of colored blocks, became an architect, then a Montessori teacher, who knows what the next generation will do!
What a great basic building set the kids can decorate! My boys love creating with Tinker Toys, blocks, Legos & random misc. stuff around the house.
Can’t go wrong with cardboard boxes and duct tape.
My seven-year old son loves to build with cardboard “bricks” and LEGO.
Wow! I normally don’t “bother” with trying to be the lucky winner, but my son would absolutely LOVE this! I’ve NEVER seen anything like it. I’m in the process of applying for disability, so, I definitely don’t have $80 to buy it, but I’m already trying to think of ways to get this for him if I don’t win. I can’t see how any kid wouldn’t just be ecstatic about this?! I’d say currently my son’s favorite building toy are the wooden blocks made by Plan Baby. He loves the fire truck his Nonna recently bought him, they’re kind of amazing.
me please – for my daughter, for my OT clients, for fun and visual motor skills!
Building is so fun!! One of the most popular building activities at our Montessori school are the MagnaTiles.
Wow! This would be great for my son. I’m always looking for ways to stimulate his imagination and this would be great. He loves his megabloks and I know he would absolutely love this.
My children like Legos and also K’Nex. They are terrific building toys!
In our classroom, the recycle bin is currently the favorite for building and constructing. All through the week items such as; cereal & tissues boxes, cardboard tubes, odd plastic bits from lunches etc, are added to this bin. Children work with tape dispensers, hole punchers, scissors and more to create elaborate structures, including bridges, buildings and towers. Recently, several were displayed at our annual art show.
Mobilo is my sons favourite
What a cool building set!! My daughter would love it! Her current favorite for building are Legos. My all time favorite is Lincoln Logs. I remember building log cabins and pretending that Laura Ingalls Wilder lived in them. Ahh…memories!
Simply amazing! My son had the time of his life with the empty boxes when we moved to a new place!
Not sure who would like this more. My sons or my husband!
My daughter is always building forts out of things from around the house. This would be a great new challenge!
My daughters favorite building toys include blankets, pillows, stuffed animals, scrap cardboard…anything to build a fort! The Bildopolis looks awesome!!!!!!
Cardboard boxes are loved around here! This looks really fun!
I like cardboard bricks. I think they are Melissa and Doug. My kids like building with them and then knocking it down
My boy and girl love to build with legos and wooden train tracks.
LEGOS! And the big old heavy wooden blocks too! This looks so great because it is such a large scale, looks like hours of fun and learning!!
My son loves building… Would be perfect for him….
Duplos!!! my daycare student’s can’t get enough of it.
The Bildopolis will definitely enthrall my students and would inspire them into building their castles, hospitals, office and so many other wonderful possibilities. Wow!
I am a big fan of plain old wooden blocks, but these look amazing! : )
Our favorite building materials are definitely plain old cardboard boxes. My oldest daughter just made a ‘doghouse’ for my youngest. I love how they can used their creativity and artistic ability to change a plain old box into absolutely anything that they care to imagine.
My students love legos. As a child I liked Lincoln Logs! This set is really cool and my students would love building with it!
Very interesting tool for ‘hands on approach’ , very useful to build tri-dimensional shapes and an utmost item to be explored with children and adults with special needs.
ooh looks fun. I am searching for things to do in the summer with the kids and this looks great fun to do inside and outdoors! I always wanted a Meccano set when i was younger. My son loves his wooden blocks to build things…he loves his Lego too, but hasn’t really used it too build anything independent of the instructions.
We love Legos and Tinker Toys here!
This set looks like a lot of fun, especially being a Montessori Teacher and being able to share this with the children in a Montessori Environment. This will be also alot of fun to learn more about shapes. Fun! Fun! Fun!
It looks pretty good! I mostly liked to play with old-fashioned building blocks, and I used to construct with local game called Merkur
Have a nice day.
My boys love building hideouts. Our favorite building sets are legos.
These are pretty cool! I know I really enjoyed constructing my own clubhouses out of giant cardboard boxes when I was a kid.
These are great! I love the flexibility and chance to be creative with building toys. My 8-year old is currently obsessed with Legos. We have blocks, Kid-connectz, Lincoln Logs, and Legos and all are used often. Building forts out of blankets is also a fun activity in our house.
These look so cool! I know my students would love them
. If I do not win, I may just have to buy them!