They have helped transform Lego into some of the most popular toys on the market and even turned its coloured bricks into valuable collectors items.But the best-selling Jurassic World and Star Wars Lego sets may be stifling children's creativity, according to a new study.Rather than traditional Lego bricks, which relied upon children's imagination to create something wonderful from a pile of plastic, the themed kits come with instructions on how to put them together. Lego kits like the Star Wars Millennium Falcon shown above, which went on sale for £168, may stifle children's creativity according to a new study by providing them with instructions on how to build the kits rather than encouraging free play and the use of their imaginations like traditional Lego setsResearchers found that these instructions make it too easy to create spaceships and dinosaurs and did not spark any creativity in youngsters.Children who were given the traditional toy bricks without instructions were found to outperform those who had been given the sets with step-by-step instructions when they later did other creative tasks.
Lego has come under fire in the past from parents who hare concerned about its specialist model building kits.They worry it takes away the pleasure and ambition involved in a child just sitting with a box of bricks and creating something from their own imagination.The debate was triggered by British blogger, Chris Swan, who complained: ‘The problem is sets that only make one thing like a dragon or something licensed from a movie.’The IT expert who was previously in the Royal Navy said: ‘Lego for me was always about creativity, remaking and improving on existing designs. Those things don’t happen with sets that are designed to build a model of a single thing.'His views were supported by the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Sir Harry Kroto Professor Marit Gundersen Engeset, from the Buskerud and Vestfold University College in Norway, said: 'There are a lot of studies that explore what enhances creativity. Ours is one of the few that considers ways in which creativity may be undermined.'What we find is that a well-defined problem — in our case, following an explicit set of instructions to build something with Legos — can actually hamper creativity in solving future problems.'Lego has insisted it bricks can help to foster creativity in children by giving them the opportunity to build almost anything they want.
The company's Legoland theme parks provides some idea of just how creative some people can get with entire cities built in miniature.Annual competitions also challenge youngsters, and some adults, to engineer and construct the most impressive structures they can come up with.However, some parents have complained that the trend for themed sets where Lego kits are specially designed to be built into a specific object, often from a film, are robbing their children of that creative freedom. Researchers gave two groups of children either a set of Lego bricks without instructions or a themed kit with instructions. They were later given creative tasks and those who had been given the bricks without instructions outperformed the other group. A stock picture of children playing with Lego is shown above Lego kits, like this Death Star from the Star Wars series, have proven to be extremely popular and in many cases have become collectors items. However, they come with instructions to make it easier to build them
Lego has released many different themed kits, usually based around popular movies, such as the Ghostbusters kit shown above. These helped to turn the company into one of the world's biggest toy firms Following the release of Jurassic World, Lego also released a range of specially made kits, shown aboveTo test this Professor Gundersen Engeset and her colleague Dr Page Moreau from the University of Wisconsin, whose research is published in the Journal of Marketing Research, gave some young subjects complete sets of the toy bricks with step-by-step instructions while others were left to build what they like.They said the results suggest the instructions with the Lego sets is similar to Googling a solution to a problem rather than retrieving it from memory.The researchers wrote: 'Managers and policymakers should become more aware of the way in which things like routine tasks can make an employee ill-suited for creative work and how standardised testing, by encouraging the use of well-defined problems, can hamper imaginative thinking.'
Lego bricks have been used to create some truly impressive creations, like this replica of London's Tower Bridge and the Thames at Legoland in Windsor pictured above These cute little emergency vehicles are built for fun. They are a smaller scale than minifig scale. You can build a mini fire truck, mini ambulance and mini police SWAT van. What do I get? NYPD Emergency Support VehicleYou really can't guarantee how your children will play. All kids are different. Some kids never build the sets according to the instructions, others ONLY build using instructions. And some are in between.The trick is figuring out how to inspire your kids into being creative and productive with LEGO. Some kids need no inspiration at all. They see the new Star Wars toys or Power Rangers or what-have-you, and they want to build new vehicles and bases for them. You didn't have to do anything. Others need you to plant an idea in their heads and give them some praise or encouragement.
Some kids need YOU to build with them and lead the process.Otherwise, don't worry about the size of the pieces. That doesn't really do anything. In fact, the smaller pieces are often better for building smaller and more creative details. Pieces like these are small and great:In fact, usually, I find that the BIG pieces are the ones that are terrible for creativity (although there aren't any parts that aren't useful in some way). I never liked these that much (for example):What makes a piece useful is generally how "specific" to a purpose it looks. If it looks generic, it's a good piece. If you look at it and immediately know what sort of thing it goes to, it's probably not a great piece.First off, I wouldn't take anything away from them. Don't take away the "non-creative" pieces, don't take away their instructions. That's a parenting call, of course, but I would deem that too intrusive. If you have to resort to that, your kids probably just aren't meant to play with LEGO the way you want them to.
I'd probably start with rules about how long a set can stay together. When it comes time for a set that they've built from instructions to get put away (after a few days or weeks, depending), it's time to take it apart completely and put it in the "LEGO bin". That will encourage them to have a bin full of LEGO that's mixed up rather than keeping their assembled sets lying around. It's an inspiration resource to have a bunch of disassembled pieces rather than assembled models.Also, I'd buy them The Right Sets.Story-based sets like Ninjago, Chima, Nexo Knights, Star Wars, etc., aren't usually as good. So don't buy these (or, buy fewer of them):Instead, buy sets that have a lot of generic pieces in them. Buy these instead:Also, as suggested earlier, if they need additional motivation, build with them yourself. Think of a fun project for both yourself and them and build it. Lead the project yourself, but have them do various tasks and make something together.I'm not sure how old are your kids.
If they are young < 3 years old. Let them play with the bigger blocks/Duplo.If they are older children - give them all the blocks available for them to express their creativity. Personally, I grew up in an environment, where my parents, do not often buy me toys other than LEGO. As such, I build my own transformers, Voltron etc.With my eldest boy, now 6. He builds new sets with instructions, and we will dismantle the older sets for bricks to free-build. Most of the time he needs no prompting, and he'll just go about building things he likes, which mostly revolves around planes.As David Eaton mentioned in his post. "Plant an idea in their heads""give praise/encouragement""Build with them"As a parent, I do all of those, and his advice resonates with me.Let your child start with something simple. Ask for them to build you a car; Sometimes, they might just surprise you with their creativity, especially when working with a limited number/type of bricks.Happen to write about of building LEGO months back, without instruction sets and how I felt LEGO helped in my child's development.
LEGO with Benefits Have fun, building with your child!I think this is a great question, because open-ended play where kids stretch and exercise their imagination and creativity is JUST as important as play in which they learn about following rules and guidelines. My suggestion is to make both of these types of play available to your kids, and let them choose. Every child is different and likes different kinds of play - no constructive play should be actively discouraged - but give them options where they can build without instructions. If they don’t respond well to having the LEGO instructions taken away from them, there are certainly lots of other LEGO alternatives out there which have the same style of play but are designed to be more open-ended / instruction-free.The whole point of LEGOs is for children to use their imaginations. Those kits with their instructions sort of defeat that purpose so if the instructions are gone then that just makes them better. I would gather all of the LEGO pieces together and pull them all apart and then separate the plain blocks from the special ones and put them in separate bowls.