Describe a toy that you liked when you were a child

When I was a child, my favourite toy was a set of wooden building blocks that my uncle gave me for my fifth birthday. They were simple, painted in bright colours and kept in a large cotton bag, and I had them until I was about twelve.

There were around a hundred pieces of different shapes: cubes, triangles, arches and long rectangles. At first, I just stacked them to make towers and then knocked them down, which made my parents laugh. As I got older, I started building more complicated things, such as castles, bridges and even a small town. I used to spend hours on the floor of my room, creating a whole world, with toy cars driving around and small figures living in the houses. Sometimes my younger cousin joined me, and we invented stories about the buildings and the people who lived in them. We played with them nearly every day.

I liked this toy because it allowed me to use my imagination. Unlike electronic toys, which tell you exactly what to do, blocks can become anything you want, so each day I made something different. It also taught me some useful skills without my noticing, like patience and balance, and probably the basics of how structures work. Perhaps it was no accident that I later became interested in engineering. Another reason was that my uncle spent time playing with me when he gave it to me, and we built a large tower together. I still have a few of the blocks in a box at home, and I would love to give them to my own children one day.