I would like to find a large catalog of LEGO designs/ideas that can be built with "traditional" LEGO bricks (both normal and DUPLO). I have found many nice designs in the web, but most of them require exotic pieces. I am interested more in a catalog of models (for inspiration) that mostly do not require to buy a specific set or making a specific order to the LEGO shop. but I am wondering if a free resource exists somewhere ? I have just read this review of the book I linked above, apparently it also suffers from the problem of requiring too many non-standard pieces: We thought this book would be great since my 5 year old is just getting into LEGO bricks. Opened it up and realized that every project in this book looks like it requires non-standard, specialty LEGO kit pieces- and lots of them. I didn't see any projects in this book that you could build using standard LEGO pieces. Returned the book the next LEGO has released a number of large brick buckets over the years.
A few of these came with instructions and ideas for models that could be built with the contents. These include lots of ideas for animals, vehicles, and structures. There are plenty of ideas available if you browse through the instructions for these sets. Here are some of the larger brick set with links to their instruction scans: here are some additional sets that mostly use fairly standard pieces you're likely to have in a basic lego collection: Peeron Lego Instruction Sets To add to jncraton's excellent answer, here are additional sets from Peeron's Lego Instructions Archive using generic bricks: Universal Building Set (400-1) BASIC Building Set (510-1) BASIC Building Set (520-1) BASIC Building Set 530 truck with trailer 319 Mini Wheel Model Maker Official Lego Instructions Site Lego's Customer service website you can browse various instruction sets by category, numeric id, or keyword. Some sets likely to be possible with generic bricks include:
Fun and Adventure 4023 - mostly builds a variety of boats & planes, also a couple small animals LEGO Deluxe House Building 3600 - makes a variety of buildings Mini Sopwith Camel 40049 - builds one war plane LLP Entrance Picture Frame 40081 - castle entrance that can hold a card or photo. For full effect requires 2 gear shaped pieces and a couple common castle pieces. Xmas Tree Deco & Gift Box 4759 - makes hang-able Christmas ornaments, requires a few technic 1x2 pieces with holes, otherwise standard bricks PIZZA TO GO 10036 - builds a pizzeria and pizza delivery truck. If you ignore the stickers, both the building and truck are almost entirely fairly standard creator bucket pieces. LEGO Leonidas' Jungle Dragster Set 30253- Makes a vehicle. This set uses a lot of pieces that are not 'standard' or in creator buckets, but are very common in current lego sets that make specialized models of any sort, and would be quite easy to build if you have a few recent lego sets.
LEGO Lone Ranger's Pump Car Set 30260- Requires a few various technic pieces Lego also has a whole categories of sets which are almost all small holiday themed sets made out of common pieces, such as snowmen, chicks, turkeys, etc. /en-us/buildinginstructions/ and select category "Pick-a-brick Retail" for 10+ sets, and category "Seasonal" for 20+ sets Lego also makes a variety of monthly "mini-builds" which are small items made with fairly common pieces. They only keep the current one available on lego's website, but others have collected the old instruction sheets for various mini-builds. and they appear to in some cases overlap items from the "seasonal" instructions above.They have scans of the boxes of almost every set every released. Many of the earlier sets (i.e., those released in the 1970s) are built almost entirely out of basic bricks, and you can usually figure out how they are built just from looking at the picture. Some links to get you started: Browse list of sets by year or theme.
Click on the set number to quickly pull up the picture. Also check out old sets listed under the "Basic" theme. The lego instructions are categorized by age and type and are also available as App for smartphone and tablet. You can build animals, rockets, buildings and even the Eiffel tower. The youngest children start with small examples, while older children can use more complex instructions. All are based on basic building blocks.My kids love it. You can try this blog http://legoideas.si/ It's oriented towards Duplo, but similar designs can also be made out of standard Legos. There is this site you can try - Rebrickable. You can enter what sets/parts you own and then browse what other creations you can build with the parts you have (or almost have). I do not know of any book that would have a large catalog of models built only with traditional bricks. I agree with Sergio above, that the best approach is to get a set that comes with lots of alternate instructions.
LEGO Creator buckets and LEGO BrickMaster books are excellent in this regard. Also, I would like to add that building anything from basic LEGO bricks is actually very easy. It is basically the same as building with traditional wooden blocks. You won't find a lot of instructions for those either because children just naturally figure out how to stack them to make a tower, a house, a bridge... so you could simply pour out the LEGO bricks and say, "Let's build a house!", then start stacking bricks to make the walls, leave openings for windows and doors, etc. You can also mix toys and use LEGO to build a castle for example and use Playmobil soldiers to populate it. The beauty of LEGO is that it is an educational and creative tool. Learning how to free-build with LEGO is one of the greatest joys of this hobby. Most 5-year-olds will much prefer that over following instructions or the designs of others. So you could just look through picture books (or the world outside) and when your child says "Oh, I would like to build a tower like that!", then get the LEGO out and just build it!...