Today has been a LEGO® themed day. Last night I started a post on a book I’ve got for review, LEGO®-Based Therapy (I didn’t finish it, you’re going to have to hang on til tomorrow.) Then this morning, I got a lovely LEGO Education starter pack in the post, so our home education was brick shaped.
Isn’t this just fab?
There’s 3 of every component. The idea is that you’re planning out stories by building scenes, including a beginning, middle and end. If you go for the full pack, (a snip at £650) you get boxes and boxes of lego, as well as software. Even the sample kit comes with a set of curriculum related instructions, and they are quite prescriptive. I might use some of the ideas to spark off activities, but I’m unlikely to be quite as firm on it all. I really enjoyed just watching Smallest build her creation and narrate a story about it as she went – I wish I’d made notes. She’s looking forward to working with Small on it though, so that should be rather fun too.
Obviously, you don’t actually need to have a storystarter kit to build stories out of LEGO, it’s pretty much what children do if you give them a box of bricks. But if you’re wanting to encourage formal story telling, this set is aimed at supporting you to do that.
The third LEGO arrival was in email. From LEGOLAND discovery centre Manchester, I’ve been sent instructions on using LEGO for float or sink experiments. (Sadly, no actual lego to try it with, will have to see if we’ve any around the house 😉 )
Isn’t that just brilliant? I think, looking at the weather forecast, we’ve 2 or 3 more warm days coming, so I foresee some time on the patio with washing up bowls. Unless poundland has any of their mini paddling pools left – they’d be perfect for this sort of thing. So yes, it looks like in terms of home education, this week everything is awesome. Shame we only rented the film from TalkTalk when we watched it before, as I think it would have been the perfect way to finish off the topic 😉
Disclosure – the LEGO education storystarter kit is free to educational establishments in the UK. As home educators for the past coming up 6 years (this time around) I guess that makes us pretty established. I will be checking whether we’re eligible for the competition mentioned in the pack *before* I set Small off on it – boy did his eyes light up when he saw the prize. If you’re not home educators, you might want to mention the kit to your school to check they’ve already got one. The float and sink instructions came free too, and just make me want even more to visit LEGOLAND even more. I’m slightly ashamed we’ve never been to any version of LEGOLAND, though I think the manchesster discovery one would suit us best. One day. If I ever get permission to drive again.
how awesome is that – I will mention it to the school. Love Legoland I have even started looking at the one in Europe now 🙂
I’ve never been, how sad is that? I can see a lot of children would massively benefit from this approach in schools 🙂
Glad you’re liking the kit. The competition however finished at the end of September (unless they’ve got a new one going?). I checked out the winning entry and think it broke all the rules of the competition as I understood them… which the anarchist in me kinda admires. It’s here if you want a look: http://marketing.legoeducation.com/acton/ct/7842/s-0072-1409/Bct/l-0085/l-0085:1b9/ct10_1/1
xx
I think that the competition runs every month up until 15th December, but I’m checking. I’ll take a look at that. And lol at your anarchist streak admiring rule breaking – my aspie side is twitching at the very thought!
Haha! Nice to ‘see’ you Jem!
I will definitely be looking into this, thanks for the heads up Jax.
No problem. I have the cutest video in the world of Smallest telling a story with it, will be sharing in a bit.