Thanks for all these ideas! I *have* been trying harder to stock up on toys that are more open-ended and/or buildy recently, so it's nice to know I'm on the right track. I slowly stocked up on some Duplo style LEGOs because we also have a littler one who always puts things in her mouth around and those were fun until a slightly older boy deemed them uncool. grrrr.
The idea of Minecraft being so appealing because he can easily build things that look cool was a total light bulb moment. I'm sure with his perfectionist tendencies, that's a big part of the draw. His Minecraft houses are always going to look better than something made from blocks or LEGOs at this point.
There's two things I know that I really need to do...weed out toys to organize our space better and set up things so that he knows what he has and can easily get things out himself. And show more examples of possibilities. Like sculptures out of paper and tape.
