LEGO: One of Our Favorite Learning Toys

Lego


We are a LEGO family, through and through. These simple yet phenomenal interlocking blocks are familiar to nearly everyone I know. They were my favorite toy as a child (and even into my early teens... shhhh, don't tell anyone). They were also RockerDad's favorite, too! See, we were meant for each other.

I immediately noticed what a great fine motor activity fitting those tiny bricks together was. Both his finger dexterity and finger strength were being developed and refined with each brick he chose and clicked into place.

He has gained many math skills while building as well. He now knows which combinations of bricks will equal other bricks or combinations. He is able to envision and integrate symmetry into his creations. He doesn't know that he knows all of this, of course. He just loves to build!

We keep our bricks in divided containers. (A few are pictured below.) We keep them sorted by size or similar attributes. When he was small, we used to sort his Mega Bloks by color... the same can easily be done with the smaller Lego bricks.

Lego


I know that much of this seems like common sense and I'm certainly not the first to notice or point out the immense versatility of Lego and similar building sets, but I realize that can be easy to overlook the educational value of things which may be right under our noses.

Lego


So.... how do YOU use your Lego blocks in your child's education?


RockerMom's Note: Robbie started playing with regular LEGO blocks when he was barely two. His big brother had a set and he liked them more than Tyler did. He was always heavily supervised due to the choking hazard.


Check out other (and admittedly, much cooler) math ideas over at

7 comments:

  1. Wow, your Legos are WAY more organized than ours!

    My almost-nine year old loves building Lego kits, especially the Star Wars variety. I'm always amazed at his patience as he works his way through the complex instructions! I'm hoping that patience will eventually shine through in others areas, too! ;)

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  2. They are great for learning to follow step by step instructions with, too!

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  3. An Almost Unschooling Mom,

    I can't believe I forgot that one! It's true. RockerDad goes through the instructions with him and Robbie is learning how to follow the instructions.

    Thanks so much for pointing this out!

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  4. We are huge Lego fans here too. I just posted about our latest Lego creations today, and I really enjoy building Lego with Anna or just watching her build. You are right - possibilities are endless.

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  5. I love the organization! Once when K built a ship, I asked her to draw it which she had to convert a 3 dimensional shape to 2-D. She did a pretty cool job of it.

    You can do addition and subtraction (overlay) with them just as you would with cuisenaire rods.

    And why not tiling for area and multiplication? Design a house that is 10X10 or something like that.

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  6. Awesome, thanks for the link at my blog today! It seems so many are interested in a Lego Party Link up...I am going to go for it...be looking mid February for the 1st one!

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