🧠✨ Why Hands-On Play Matters So Much When children use their hands — stacking blocks, painting, digging in dirt, building LEGO creations, kneading dough — their brains light up! Every act of creating and doing releases dopamine and serotonin, the “feel-good” brain chemicals that are part of the effort-driven reward cycle. 👉 This means joy doesn’t just come from finishing something — it comes from the process of effort itself. When a child feels, “I worked hard on this,” their brain rewards the