Toy blocks are wooden, plastic

Plastic

A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...

 or foam

Foam

-Definition:A foam is a substance that is formed by trapping gas in a liquid or solid in a divided form, i.e. by forming gas regions inside liquid regions, leading to different kinds of dispersed media...

 pieces of various shapes (square

Square (geometry)

In geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral. This means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles...

, cylinder

Cylinder (geometry)

A cylinder is one of the most basic curvilinear geometric shapes, the surface formed by the points at a fixed distance from a given line segment, the axis of the cylinder. The solid enclosed by this surface and by two planes perpendicular to the axis is also called a cylinder...

, arch

Arch

An arch is a structure that spans a space and supports a load. Arches appeared as early as the 2nd millennium BC in Mesopotamian brick architecture and their systematic use started with the Ancient Romans who were the first to apply the technique to a wide range of structures.-Technical aspects:The...

, triangle

Triangle

A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a polygon with three corners or vertices and three sides or edges which are line segments. A triangle with vertices A, B, and C is denoted ....

, etc.) and color

Color

Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...

s that are used as building toy

Toy

A toy is any object that can be used for play. Toys are associated commonly with children and pets. Playing with toys is often thought to be an enjoyable means of training the young for life in human society. Different materials are used to make toys enjoyable and cuddly to both young and old...

s. Sometimes toy blocks depict letters of the alphabet

Alphabet

An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...

.
1693: One of the first references to Alphabet Nursery Blocks was made by English philosopher John Locke

John Locke

John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...

, in 1693, made the statement that "dice and playthings, with letters on them to teach children the alphabet by playing" would make learning to read a more enjoyable experience.

1798: Witold Rybczynski

Witold Rybczynski

Witold Rybczynski , is a Canadian-American architect, professor and writer.Rybczynski was born in Edinburgh of Polish parentage and raised in Surrey, England before moving at a young age to Canada. He attended Loyola High School , located on Sherbrooke street, in Montreal-Ouest...

 has found that the earliest mention of building bricks for children appears in Maria

Maria Edgeworth

Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe...

 and R.L. Edgeworth's

Richard Lovell Edgeworth

Richard Lovell Edgeworth was an Anglo-Irish politician, writer and inventor.-Biography:Edgeworth was born in Pierrepont Street, Bath, England, grandson of Sir Salathiel Lovell through his daughter, Jane Lovell....

 Practical Education (1798).