Learning with Legos

Learning with Legos

   What kid, or even adult for that matter, doesn't love to play with legos? Legos are one of the most versatile learning tools we can use to make learning fun, while still challenging our kids. Not only can we use Legos to help them learn new concepts, they also helps them practice their fine motor skills! Most families have Legos laying around their house, probably on the floor waiting to be stepped on! Below I have attached a few activities/challenges adults can pose to their children to challenge them creatively, while also making the learning fun at home.

Lego Symmetry

   The first one is Lego Symmetry Kids will use their fine motor skills to learn about symmetry and replicate it on the other side of the lego base plate.

Materials: Lego base plate (any size), Legos and tape/ rubber band, yarn or string

1. Put the rubber band (could be yarn tape, string whatever you are using to divide your base plate in half) down the middle of the base plate
2. On only one side of the tape/rubber band make a design on the base plate using the legos
3. Hand it to you child and have them complete the other half of the design using the tape/rubber band as the line of symmetry.
4. Have Fun!

Lego Sight Words

Next, is Lego Sight Words. Working on basic letter sounds and reading phonics.

Materials: Lego Duplo blocks or larger block, washable marker

1. Write the sight word on the big base piece
2. Write a letter on each of the individual blocks
3. Have them put the blocks together to make the sight word
4. Read the sight word
5. Extension: Take off the bottom base piece and see how many words they can make with the same beginning or ending sounds.
6. Example: If the sight word is CAN. They can also stack on top of it to make TAN, FAN, RAN and so on.

Lego Tower Counting

Then, we have the Lego Tower Counting. This works on basic counting skills. For extension activities you could also incorporate patterns, geometry, or skip counting.

Materials: Any type of Legos

1. Challenge them to see how tall of a tower they can build.
2. Count how many blocks they used to make their tower
3. Extension 1: If they build their tower two blocks wide have them practice counting by 2's. If they build it three blocks wide have them count by 3's and so forth. 
4. Extension 2: Have them use a pattern and continue it while building their tower. If they used 4 different colors in their pattern have them skip count by 4's. You can start teaching multiplication with how many groups of 4?

30 Day Lego Challenge

The 30 Day Lego Challenge is a whole month filled with challenges for your kids. Each day poses a unique challenge where they may have to plan, design and then create whatever the challenge is for the day.

Materials: Legos

1. For this one there really are no steps. Each day poses a new challenge. You can keep this as simple as just creating what the challenge is for the day, to taking them through the engineering design process. You could make them have to design, create and then write about it. The possibilities are endless with this months worth of challenges!

I hope this helps you and your kids have endless amounts of fun while learning! Please comment and let me know which one was your favorite activity to do!

Lesson: The only way to never reach your goal is to never start. "You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great!"