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Whenever Little Buddy gets a dollar, it is immediately burning a hole in his pocket to go buy the latest Lego he’s been eying. From the boxes full of 100s of bricks to the Star Wars sets with more bricks than I could ever imagine and his Mindstorms, he loves them all.
He loves them so much that I’m actually beginning to use them more in some of our lessons to keep his interest and help make things fun for him, too.
For instance, I’ve been using them in math by giving him a worksheet with math problems asking him to build a Lego to answer the problem. Square roots and division became a lot easier when he was encouraged to build his answers rather than just telling me or writing it down. I sure wish someone had thought of a cool way to teach me those things when I was his age!
When he was able to complete his science project on velocity with a Lego car with a balloon, he was more than eager to dive right in. His excitement at creating the design that performed the best was amazing. I have to admit, it was more fun for both of us.
I do believe he’s loved making stop motion movies with his Legos the most though. Who knows what they’ll lead to in the future. I just love his passion for them.
This next year, we’ll be diving into more STEM based lessons with his Mindstorms and I’m thinking of attending the upcoming Robotics Symposium provided by Lego. Do you think they’ll notice that my son is the one teaching me about them?
Do you use Legos in your homeschool? Please share some ways you use them. I’d love to know.
My stepson was just like your Little Buddy. He got his degree in cybernetics from Reading University in England over a year ago and his final year project was made out of legos. When he finished he had them all shipped back to Australia. A roomful of them! He made robots and taught them to talk to each other to accomplish tasks.
Mindstorm is good.
Oh my goodness, Maureen! How exciting!
We were allowed to quietly build with Legos while my mom read to us. It was a great way to keep our hands occupied while we listened to all the great stories [smile].
~Luke
Luke, that is another great idea. I’ll give that a try and see if he actually *listens* to the story! 🙂
We’re just starting and I’m working on a post right now about using Legos…. seems like my sons uses them for EVERYTHING these days! I’m hoping to formalize our plans some more. Thanks for your post!
My brother and I always played with Legos as kids, now he’s an architect! I will be homeschooling a 4th grader this year, and I love your idea of incorporating legos into the lessons, I’ll have to try that!
Legos are a daily part of our homeschool. Stop-motion animation is an awesome learning tool that goes well beyond S.T.E.M. Our son learned storyboarding, script writing, and copyright law in addition to audio, video, and photo editing. All because of his love for everything LEGO.