Lessons from LEGOs

This weekend I finally convinced the girls to give up their large bin of LEGO Quatros. They donated that and ten other toys to Goodwill. So I decided to treat them and purchased them some regular small LEGOs. I went to the store looking for a plain old box of just LEGO blocks, not a set to build anything in particular. Finally tucked away in a corner I found it, mostly, it still had the makings of a helicopter and car but it was 80% blocks. I got that and an additional box of just blocks and headed home. I knew they would like them but I didn’t expect what happened. The world stopped. It was all LEGOs, all the time, ALL weekend, for ALL of us. Hubbie and I included. We stopped briefly to go to our homeschooling resource center’s work day but then back to the LEGOs. We made planes, houses, flags and more.

At one point my youngest wanted to make the car that was part of the set so we started looking at the directions and gathering pieces. It was at that point that it hit me, these are great learning toys. In gathering the pieces she had to count the number of bumps on each piece to make sure that she had the right one, count the total number of each kind of piece and she had to follow the directions to put it all together. My oldest made her own airplane design and then walked me through step by step so I could create one for myself. We then made a runway together. She also turned the LEGOs into dice and started playing Farkle.

I now find myself wondering what other toys are out there that are great for learning that I’ve overlooked all these years.