Make your own wooden building blocks...out of the real deal!

Do you live in an urban area and see a lot of this after storms?

Or, maybe you live in a wooded area and have some dead tree limbs to remove from time to time, or need to trim a tree that has become overgrown.

But don't throw out that wood! Scavenge it for natural tree building blocks. Magic Cabin has some beautiful versions of these, but if you are the do-it-yourself type or simply aren't willing or able to shell out around $50 for a 32 piece set, you can make your own!

Be sure the wood you select is either dead and dry, or alive when you cut it. No rotting wood!

Use a hand saw or chain saw to cut off desirable chunks of wood.

 A chain saw will give you the fastest results, but a hand saw can be used to cut the chunks of wood off that you need. Pay special attention to saving the "joints" as they can be used to create fun stacking pieces. Don't worry about slicing them to the block size in this stage. Just cut the main chunks first, and toss, compost, or burn what you won't be using (campfire, anyone?)

A chainsaw was used to make this bigger cut.

Using a brace can make the cutting easier.

Now, this probably isn't the best example of safety here, my dad was helping me and has been known to injure himself. So, you may want to do this on a workbench or sturdy table if you have one. We didn't, so we used an old wine box. We tried to start slicing the big chunks into the  building block sized pieces with this hand saw, but it was taking forever. We decided to use a table saw instead. If you don't have one accessible (some places rent them), you can use a plain old hand saw, just use a sharp one. This one in this picture was a piece of junk!

 This is the "before" picture with all the chunks we are about to slice up.

Sand your chunks before slicing into thinner building blocks.

It is easier to sand the chunks first, while you have big pieces. You don't need to sand the bark all the way off as it is being done here. Minimally, smooth it so there are not any slivers or rough edges that kid fingers or mouths can get caught on. You can use plain sandpaper, too, it will just take you longer. But if you don't have an electric sander, it will work.

After sanding, cut the chunks into 3-4 inch thick pieces.

Finished product in action.

After you have the slices cut up, you are ready to play! If the wood you found was in an area with poison ivy, you will want to wipe everything down with rubbing alcohol to kill any oils. Also just disinfects.

Choosing branches of different levels of thickness and diameter will yield stacking variety.

If you saved some "joints" they make for interesting stacking tools.

Some of the bark was sanded off on some, we left some on others for  a variety of textures.

Kids love baskets and they look great, too.

Placing your finished product in some baskets will give the kids something to "fill and dump" and also to carry around. Having several baskets that they can fill and move around will add to the fun, too. But keep these away from your dog if you have one, mine loves to chew on them!

If you have wooden dolls, you can make a cafe table out of the blocks for them. You can also paint the alphabet letters on the blocks, too. Ideas are endless! It could also be fun to combine your own homemade blocks with a wooden, store-brought line that has colorful pieces like Haba USA 1160 Little Amsterdam Building Blocks. Haba is a line from Germany with all natural wood products, very well made.