Kids & Family
Classic LEGO® Comeback
I was invited to review Classic LEGO® set 10705. The bricks are of a surprisingly large number of colors and shapes.
Every brick lover approaches a LEGO® set differently. Some will immediately set to work completing the build using the step-by-step instructions. Some will work to the pictures without the instructions. Some will build three things, with absolute disregard for the pictures and instructions. I've been spending a lot of time learning to appreciate the function of individual bricks and assemblies. I have a tactile appreciation of the brick. I will run my hands through a bin of bricks, and feel the bricks as they pass over my hands, as one might feel the warm sand on a sunny beach. Presented with a bucket of bricks, I will eventually identify some brick that I will search for, then spend the rest of my time looking for that kind of brick. It's not intentional, it just happens that way. I search for hinge parts, wheel and axles, tires, inverse slopes for legs, wedge parts for microbuilding. Searching, sorting, feeling. That is my greatest appreciation of the brick.
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I must say at this point, that I know, understand and appreciate the benefits of a LEGO® brick culture. The LEGO® group has successfully worked to tie its product to education goals at many levels. I originally got to know of LEGO® through its' FIRST LEGO® League outreach. It was after I was committed to the FLL competition that I was introduced to the huge creative medium that the LEGO® brick provides, and the potential of taking a young person's love of the brick into a world of mechanics, robotics, story making, abstract and real visual creations. It helped that I had a nephew who was a brick lover and who has grown into an AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO®), building his MOCs (my own creations) that he sometimes shares for displays. So I work to cultivate a LEGO® culture, to find new and old ways to use the bricks; to teach myself techniques in the brick.
On to LEGO® Classics set 10705, the Creative Building Basket.
I've brought the set out on three occasions so far.
At the Long Beach Comic Con, we challenged individuals to build as many creatures as they could in one 5 minute period. As it turned out, our instructions must not have been very clear, as some individuals built houses and other inanimate objects. Certainly, some built creatures. Maybe they didn't care that the goal was creatures. They wanted to build houses. One fellow built whatever he wanted, then explained how it was a creature. Awesome! LEGO bricks at their very best.
Back at the Long Beach Sea Base, I've been working to find teaching moments for early elementary school youth. One brick lover commented "Classic LEGO®, I love Classic LEGO! You don't see it too often". We counted to 1000. It's the number of bricks in the set. We divided the bricks into piles of 100, and counted to 1000 in 100's. It could easily be done in sets of 2, 5 and 10.
We counted the number of people in our collective families (using the bricks to keep track).
We learned new words. Collaboration and collaborative as they apply to building. Monochromatic as they apply to builds. We built both individually and collaboratively. Most of us built monochromatic creations when tasked to do so. One was too young to care.
We collaborated to find a way to count how many colors of bricks (with translucent bricks being considered a different color from opaque bricks). We thought we'd never get it right. There are so many bricks and so many colors! We counted 39, then found a 40th color. We think that is the answer. Forty. That's a lot of colors. How many did you count?
They are really cool colors. Lots of shades of different colors that you don't see very often. Too many to count? Well, if there are more than forty, it will have proven too many for us to count! There are lots of translucents, too!
When you're sharing with bricks for several hours at a time, you find the need to have separate boxes of bricks, each for a different purpose. I've been using the Classic LEGO® set as a good collection to start off the day. We can do a lot with it, get some of our language and math requirements out of the way before we get on to other forms of purposeful play.
I wish I could tell you we designed the most awesome creations and show pictures of them to you. We had some good times making fun creations, but I think the best part was when we collected sets of unique colors of 1x2 and 2x2 bricks, discussed the various ways we could sort the bricks, and worked together to sort and count the colors. When we were done, we put the bricks back into the box, hoping that we hadn't lost one of the bricks somewhere, because if we had, then, we could only count to 999. Certainly we knew the meaning of collaboration.
About the Author Trish Tsoi-A-Sue is a creativity facilitator, Maker and Geek Mom in the Long Beach
area. Certified in LEGO® Serious Play and Creative Problem Solving Institute's Springboard training, she is the CEO of ETES Inc, and creator of Makersville, a grassroots community of makers. Trish is the Ambassador for the Long Beach LEGO® User Group, a group of AFOLs and Teen Fans of LEGO® (TFOLs). Join our facebook group! Some of her random experiences are recorded on her You Tube channel, Squigglemom! Please subscribe! Trish is grateful for the opportunities provided by the Long Beach Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, without which support Makersville would not exist.