Learning and exploring with Lego

Who doesn’t love Lego?  It’s usually a part of everyone’s childhood, and N’s just progressing from Duplo to proper Lego.  Unlike when we were children, there’s now massive ranges of Lego, and more options for different age ranges.   I’m all for encouraging a love of Lego and creating items, so getting the chance to choose some for review from Asda Direct was a great opportunity to get N into it and encourage him to be more creative with his building.

Asda Direct sell across the various Lego ranges, from Duplo, through the Junior Easy Build range, then to City Friends, Classic, and then the Lego Creator range for older children and we chose a range of items so we could see how N can grow into the ranges (plus give me a bit of a challenge!).  I’m astounded by the variety that’s available, and it definitely caters for every type of Lego owner.

I did post a while back showing our hand-me-down Lego from my brother (I’m sure some of it was mine originally, and some of the basic were even our dad’s previously).  Everyone’s been saying it’ll never stay organised like that, but at the moment it’s going well.  Eventually I’m sure we’ll combine the new sets we received as well.

We’ve now added 3 more boxes to our collection.

Lego Classic

A tub of mixed basic items in a selection of colours.  This tub is great for building up different pieces and colours, and comes with a small instruction booklet for some basic pieces to make up.  There’s also lots of resources and instructions on the Lego website, to aid your creativity.  Lego’s great nowadays – during my childhood we didn’t have pinks, purples and all the different shades of colours.  There’s so many more permeatations now, the sky’s the limit in terms of design.

Lego Junior – The Big Escape

N was given the castle from this range for Christmas and loved it.  In the boxes from his uncle there were already some made up police and fire vehicles, so he’s been in his element playing with his emergency services.  The junior range is really handy for younger children making the move to proper Lego because quite a lot of the larger pieces are solid pieces, meaning fewer other bits are needed to build the kit up.  N was able to quite easily build (with a bit of pointing by me) the police car and the prison, until he wandered off to play with the car and bikes while I finished off the police station for him.

His 6 year old cousin came to play the other day and wanted some interesting toys to play with so I suggested he get out the made up Lego.  Wow, the excitement was much more than I expected.  He wanted to know who’d made it up, what set it was and more.  He and N then played with it for about 30 minutes before N decided to run it over with his toy buggy.  Cue annoyance from his cousin and me having to pick up all the bits after they’d moved on to something else.

Lego Creator – Toy & Grocery shops

While N’s not yet really old enough for the Lego Creator range, I thought this would be a good set for him to play with and combine with his other pieces.  Who doesn’t want a post office or toy shop that opens and closes up – ingenious!  He helped pass me a few pieces, and build the initial part, but 56 stages was a bit too long for him.  I loved it though, and it’s understandable why there are Lego obsessives and why it’s a classic toy that’s lasted through the generations.

My only disappointment with the Lego sets in general is that looking at the specific set pictures, you feel like you get everything to make up.  Yes it might claim 3 in 1, but what it actually means is that you can make 1 or 2 of the set (depending on which you own), then have other pieces to make up the 3rd item once you’ve pulled it down.  So to make the full village and use it all at once, you need a couple of sets realistically.  I don’t think N quite grasps this fact yet, because each 3 in 1 set we have, he keeps asking to make another, but doesn’t want to pull the item already built to pieces.

Really, you can’t beat Lego for a toy at any age, and I’m now thinking that we might be able to do a proper clear out of N’s toys, only keeping his Lego, train set and farm toys, along with books and crafty things.  The rest can probably be passed on, sold or chucked, especially with summer coming up when he’ll spend a lot more time outside.

Now N’s had a good introduction to Lego, my next 2 tasks are to:

1. Ensure he tries to keep all the colours and pieces nicely segmented for ease of finding each time he gets the Lego out, and

2. Get him to make up his Lego on a mat or blanket, so any remaining pieces can just get tipped back in the boxes without going everywhere.  I’m already finding tiny bits of Lego everywhere I look.

I’m sure next Christmas is going to see more Lego appearing on N’s wish list.  And I’m debating using Lego to practise my photography on… Pinkoddy is a great example of a Lego photo shoot fan!.

Are your children Lego fans?  Or are you the parent, the bigger fan?

————————————————————-

Disclosure:  We were sent Lego of our choice for the purpose of review.  All words and opinions are my own.