Legos and Learning

"Look! We built a roller coaster!" Every morning our sons wake up and start the day by playing with LEGO. And every morning I am amazed by what they create.

A few weeks ago they went on their first ever roller coaster ride at Six Flags Magic Mountain and a few days later they built a roller coaster out of LEGO. They didn't use a roller coaster LEGO set, they just had a vision and created a moving roller coaster out of LEGO they already had. Over the next few days they built several other rides including "Drop of Doom" and "Ninja", a ride where you hang down from the track rather than riding on top.

A few years ago after a ferry ride they built a ferry out of LEGO and after going on their first sailing trip they built a LEGO sailboat. Air museums and electric aircraft tours inspire tiny airplane creations the next day and a flight on a plane may result in a miniature LEGO airport.

As I watched them create an amusement park sized to fit tiny plastic people with interchangeable heads, I can see how they are processing everything they have learned and deepening their understanding as they build. They discuss the details of the rides with each other, checking their memories on exactly how a ride was designed and tinkering with pieces until they find a suitable way to replicate it.

Watching them create and build with LEGO gives us an opportunity to quite literally see what they have learned. It shows us which parts of an experience our children remembered most, the parts of an experience that they took with them. And when they play and engage with an experience after the experience itself, it solidifies the memories and lessons of an experience even more concretely.

There's a reason that even though our family of four lives in under 300 square feet we created a dedicated LEGO table and storage system in the boys' room. They are they most loved and most played with toy and when LEGO inspire them to reflect and create and give us an inside look at how their brains are processing the adventures we take them on, they're my favorite toy too.