Learning with Legos

As I am beginning to change our schooling to unschooling, I am trying to find new ways to incorporate learning through play.  Of course, I went on Pinterest to locate some treasures, and I found some ideas using Legos, which all of my children enjoy playing with.

I found some printables for creating your own Mini-Figures at Homegrown Learners and we had some creative drawing of historical figures and then make believe figures.  We then wrote little stories about the figures.  My 1st grader wrote a few words, but I didn't push too much since he was reluctant to pick up his pencil.  But he really enjoyed dictating a story to me and reading it out loud later to daddy.

 I also found a Lego board game that I printed off.  I made up the rules.  Lego men were used as the game pieces.  We played where each person started with 6 lego pieces and we rolled a die to collect pieces along the game board.  At the end, we built anything we wanted out of the pieces we won.  For my first grader, I had him build something before we start and then we roll 2 dice (for addition or subtraction practice) and add or take away pieces depending on what spot we land on.

This was my creation.  I had to have the Lego Man leaping into the hovercraft.  It's what he really would be doing.  I mean come on, it's a hovercraft!

BG, my preschooler, working on his creation after the game.  He won many more pieces than I did.

I am definitely going to use this game again.  Not only did I get to incorporate math, writing, history and art into the day, I also had 3 happy children who asked to play the game again the next day.  That makes me happy!

Amanda