Compare natural and man-made structures, and learn what makes them stable. Experience the push and pull of forces on our earthquake table. LEGO Robotics For Young Beginners 2.0 Discover LEGO Education WeDo® 2.0. Create a tadpole-to-frog model. Program it to outrun the alligator! Or build a bee and pollinate a flower. Sensors make the bee stop and buzz. Build a mini-theme park ride and add LEGO riders! Learn to use gears to make it go faster, slower, and change direction. Put the STEAM in STEM with this Language Arts and Visual Arts program. Learn the elements of a good story, and build speaking and listening skills. Build plot, setting and characters. Physical Forces: Get Moving! Build and race a LEGO car to test friction and wind resistance. Compare and test different designs. Build a solar-powered Joule Jeep! Compare solar and mechanical power with the energy meter! Will solar-powered cars run on a cloudy day? Use LEGO MINDSTORMS, practice problem-solving and programming.
Adventure Bots retrieve LEGO treasure.Dr. Heartbeat's NanoBots deliver meds to keep the LEGO heart beating. Have you always wanted a dog? Build and animate a Dog Bot! Learn to integrate gears, pulleys and motors to achieve a working animation. Animal Allies FIRST LEGO League Robot Game Grades 4 - 8 LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 robots deliver food and release the panda. Tips for FIRST LEGO League teams, new discoveries for all. Octopus Garden: Body Parts and Behaviors at SEA LIFE Aquarium Meet our Giant Pacific Octopus. Discover camouflage, jet propulsion and ink-squirting. Survival at Sea: Habitats and Adaptations at SEA LIFE Aquarium Journey across four habitats. Look for animal adaptations. Squid Dissection at SEA LIFE Aquarium Dive into external and internal squid anatomy and compare to humans. Dissect a real squid! STORE: Gary Istok Rare Bricks Gary is well known as one of the most knowledgeable persons alive on LEGO’s history. His knowledge, especially of the early days of the LEGO Group, is simply amazing!
If you ever have any questions about the history of the LEGO Group or a LEGO piece you cannot identify, Gary will dazzle you with incredibly detailed data, peppered with fascinating and colorful tidbits from the history of our favorite building blocks. Gary also created a detailed CD, called the , which covers LEGO’s history from 1949 to the 1980s. You can find pictures, sample chapters and pages of the CD, and purchase the CD on Gary’s website or in his Bricklink Store. Here is just one sample of the appreciation for Gary’s work: Today my copy of “The Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide” finally came in the mail and it was definitely worth the wait. Gary Istok has spent a lot time and effort on this CD, and it shows. There are over 1,000 pages of wonderful LEGO information. So much information that I don’t know if I will ever be able to read it all! But the nice thing is that you don’t have to. Gary has divided the CD into multiple pdf files with an excellent Table of Contents.
It is very easy to find exactly the information you need. This work will be a significant resource in the Lego community for years to come. (from Josh via The Brothers Brick) Gary’s own journey with LEGO has been very interesting. Here I will let him share with his own words: “My name is Gerhard (Gary) Roland Istok. I live in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, which is a Great Lakes shoreline suburb of Detroit. From St. Clair Shores, I can see across Lake St. Clair to Canada, which is less than 10 miles away. I was born in Germany in 1953, and came to the USA (Detroit) with my family in 1958. At Christmas 1960, my uncle in Germany sent me a 700/1 basic LEGO set. This was a full year before LEGO came to the USA. In 1961 my Grandfather bought me 20 small European spare parts packs… everything from “macaroni bricks” to trees and bushes. I continued building up my LEGO inventory by going to ‘Earl’s Bike Shop” as a kid. This far east side Detroit store (about 10 blocks from home) was where I went whenever I had an extra 50 cents to go buy another spare parts packs (most were only 50c).
In 1962, my aunt asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I gave her a 1961-62 Samsonite LEGO Catalog, and told her that I wanted a 717 Junior Constructor Set, a European gabled house design model. She didn’t find it in 1962, so I got a bicycle for Christmas from my well-to-do aunt. The next year she kept looking, but was never able to find that specific set. So she bought another set that was labeled “717 Junior Constructor”, but was of a flat roofed modern house. It took another 40 years before I found out (from the folks at TLG LEGO Archives) that the original 717 set was never produced as a gable roofed set. I went into my “Dark Ages” in 1968, and emerged from it in 1979. That was when I was visiting relatives in Germany. I went to a small town bookstore, and in the back of the store I came across about 30 LEGO parts packs of circa 1960-65. I also came across 2 retailer LEGO Windows/Door boxes, which allowed kids to buy individual LEGO windows and doors from a large box.
I purchased the entire lot (over 800 windows/doors) for only $80. That got me back into LEGO, back when there were very few AFOLs. Whenever I visited any town in Europe or USA/Canada for the next 15 years, I scoured the toy stores wherever I went. I spent thousands of dollars on old LEGO items and sets. My best finds were 35 #760 London Bus sets for $7 each, 25 #455 Lear Jet sets for $2 each, 10 #375 Yellow Castle sets on clearance for $24 each, and 10 #6390 Main Street sets on clearance for $20 each. In 1985, I created a LEGO display for a Detroit toy store called “Mom’s Toy Attic”. The next year I was in a local newspaper as an anomaly (an adult who plays with LEGO). In 1986 TLG sent a representative to my house to interview me, and within 2 months I got a phone call from Henry Wiencek, author of “World of LEGO Toys”. I am the only AFOL mentioned in that book, on page 30. Also in 1986, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) sent a camera crew to my house to interview me for “25 Years of LEGO in Canada” on the Canadian news show “The Journal”.