Lego Learning

I have three boys (aged six, four and two) so perhaps unsurprisingly we have LOTS of Lego in our house and it is something that they all play together with. Legoland is on their top places to visit and on Monday we had a great day out at the Legoland Discovery Centre in Manchester.

Duplo is a firm favourite for building houses for all sorts of toys, building bridges for the wooden railway and building towers, trains and all sorts of other constructions. Building with Duplo and then standard Lego is great for fine motor skill development as children pick up the pieces and connect them together (tip: pulling apart Duplo is easier than putting it together). We have now started to move onto "little Lego" and are enjoying building models following the instructions.

There are many other targets that can use Lego as a tool...

Colours - match, sort and identify the different colours

Sorting - by colour, shape or size of brick

Patterns - make colour patterns using the blocks (or use them as mosiac tiles)

Shapes - use Lego bricks to build / identify different shapes (both 2D and 3D depending on the bricks you have

Counting - simply use the bricks in place of counters or count how many bricks were needed in your creation. You can also use them for addition and subtraction and solving word problems - make a tower with 3 green bricks and 5 red bricks, how many bricks did you use altogether? or take two blocks away, how many blocks are in your tower now?

Measuring - use your Lego bricks as a unit for measuring (see No Time for Flashcards for a great demonstration)

Literacy - put words or letters on your Lego bricks to make great literacy manipulatives (see Filthwizardry for an excellent example)