Yes, Lego, the most popular toy ever made is also ridiculously educational! In fact, when coming up with this list it was difficult to limit it to just 20 activities. The educational possibilities of the humble Lego are seemingly endless. If you have kids, the odds are pretty good that you have at least a few Lego sets lying around (though hopefully not on the floor—those things hurt to step on!) For most of these activities, you can use whatever bricks your kids have, whether that’s the basic building sets or bricks from themed sets like City, Star Wars, Ninjago, or Batman. While Lego does have an entire section of its website devoted to education, many of these activities require you to purchase specific sets, some of which can be expensive. While there are some wonderful resources there, we wanted to focus on activities any parent could do with Legos already on hand. So with a few exceptions, the ideas in this post can be completed with any basic Lego bricks you have on hand.
These activities for learning with legos are organized by grade level, from preschool through high school, although many activities could be adapted to work for older or younger students. Lego learning activities for preschool and lower elementary 1. How to teach preschoolers their numbers with Legos, and more number and counting activities for preschoolers 2. Learn about color and patterns with Lego or Duplo blocks 3. Practice the alphabet with Lego bricks 4. Graphing, fractions, and multiplication activities using Lego bricks. Perfect for bringing some fun into elementary school math! 5. Reenact historical events or build famous structures with Lego. The difficulty level of this activity could easily be adapted for any grade level. Just look at this high school student’s Lego reenactment of the Boston Tea Party! 6. Practice greater than and less than with this simple Lego math activity
7. Practice sight words and sentence building with Legos Lego activities for upper elementary and middle school students 8. Use Lego figures to inspire writing. Kids can create stories and comics using Lego mini-figures and a comic creating software, like Comic Life or one of these free comic creators. Although this post focuses on using Lego’s own story visualization software, it contains some great ideas for using Legos to get kids to write stories that could certainly be adapted to other platforms. If you’d like to try out the Lego Story Visualizer, check out the free demo. 9. Use Lego bricks to learn about taxonomy and animal classification. This activity can also be adapted for different grade levels by including more complex scientific terms. 10. Practice state abbreviations and capitols with Legos. You could easily use this method to learn countries and their capitols too! 11. Learn how simple machines work with Lego’s animated Constructopedia.
This free resource is designed to accompany Lego’s Machines & Mechanisms sets. The animated GIFs show how pulleys and gears work, so you can replicate these mechanisms yourself. 12. Build a Lego catapult for a mini lesson in history and physics, or make a balloon-powered Lego car with this photo guide from Make Magazine. 13. Lego’s WeDo sets are aimed at introducing elementary school students to robotics and programming, and they work with Scratch, a favorite kid-friendly programming language. While they do require purchasing special sets, it could be a great intro to STEM subjects for your future programmers and engineers. Lego activities for middle school and high school students 14. Learn about math and symmetry with this Lego activity that can be adapted for basic and advanced levels 15. Make a Lego periodic table of the elements 16. Use Lego bricks to represent atoms and molecules in this chemistry experiment 17. With these free downloads from Queen Mary University of London, you can learn about particle physics, fission and fusion, and the creation of the universe- all using Lego bricks!
18. Learn about structural engineering with Lego bricks with this guide from How Stuff Works 19. MIT’s Lego lesson on photosynthesis is a great option for students in middle school and high school. It includes free printable worksheets and detailed instructions. 20. Of course we can’t leave out the amazing Lego Mindstorms! These cool sets are a great introduction to robotics and engineering, and while they do run a little expensive, if you have a kid who’s excited about STEM it may be a worthwhile investment. Read this tutorial on getting started with Lego Mindstorms for lots of helpful links and resources. There are also many competitions and leagues where kids can build robots together and attend competitions and events. Finally, if you have a child in a K12 online school, be sure to ask your teacher about our online clubs, where we have clubs for every interest, including Legos! Have you ever used Legos for educational purposes? Share your favorite Lego learning activity in the comments!
Photo: Maia WeinstockFull Screen Photo: Maia WeinstockFull Screen Abby AbazoriusEmail: abbya@mit.eduPhone: 617-253-2709MIT News Office 2 images for download Media can only be downloaded from the desktop version of this website. LEGO Ideas announcementWomen of NASA Maia Weinstock Photos: LEGO ScitweepsVERY...successful first BRICKPICKER LEGO RAFFLE in which we raised over $62,000.00 for the school, a year has passed, and it’s time to raffle off some dynamic LEGO gifts for charity. The money we raised last year literally kept the school open...which is a great thing. It's a special school that once again was voted BEST Private School in Burlington County, NJ, by The Burlington County Times, along with numerous other awards, such as: CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE 2017 BRICKPICKER LEGO RAFFLE FOR ST. PAUL SCHOOL! As I stated last year, St.Paul School (SPS) and its community are wonderful. People from all races and religions attend St. Paul School. Besides excelling in educating the children, the school does a tremendous amount of charity for local people in need.
From food drives to helping out at local retirement homes, the children of St.Paul School are required to perform “service hours” that are designed to teach generosity, altruism and instill a hard-working, disciplined attitude. Excellence is expected and permeates through St. Paul School and the faculty and student body, so does a sense of goodness and frugalness. We make a little money go a long way. But all is not wonderful though. As many of you know, many Catholic schools have a hard time making ends meet. Enrollments are down due to weak economic conditions throughout the world. Even superb schools like St. Paul School have a hard time keeping the doors open. While we did pick up 25 new students this past year to ease the financial burden, we will still be way short of breaking even; thus the need for the 2017 BrickPicker LEGO Raffle 2.0. This year’s version of the LEGO raffle will start with TEN awesome prizes. PRIZE #1 BRICKPICKER MEMBER RAFFLE LOT: PRIZE #2 BRICKPICKER MYSTERY RAFFLE LOT (OVER 5000 PIECES):
This year’s total prize value exceeds last year’s total by over $1000.00. Last year we had 11 raffle prizes and winners from around the world. From Vancouver, Canada to Reno, Nevada to Miami Beach, Florida to the Isle of Man, United Kingdom and everywhere in between, generous raffle participants were rewarded with awesome LEGO prizes. Like last year, we will ship the prizes to anywhere across the globe. If there is an issue with shipping or prizes, a comparable prize and/or shipping method will be arranged with the winner. Last year, the LEGO BrickPicker Raffle worked very well. site is a first class, secure site that made this all possible. They also issued the school a big fat check. All raffle proceeds and donations benefit the school directly by bridging the gap between what tuition covers and actual educational costs. It also raises money to upgrade the school’s technology, keeping St. Paul School ahead of the academic curve with a dynamic curriculum. The prizes have been donated by Jeff and I, the St.Paul School PTA and by some very generous BrickPicker members.
I am hoping, like last year, that more people will donate sets after the raffle begins. It was fun adding to the prizes last year. You never know what can pop up as a prize! On a personal note, I would like to thank every person who donated sets/money and/or bought tickets to last year’s LEGO BrickPicker Raffle. It saved a wonderful school and kept dozens of people employed and 175 kids with their friends and teachers. I don’t like asking, but will anyway...please help out again this year. Even buying one ticket can help and it gives you a chance to win some great prizes. Watching the raffle ticket total rise every day was an intense rush and extremely gratifying experience. It made me so proud to have started this site with my brother Jeff and made me realize there is still good in this world…If you are a winner, please contact me on the site so we can confirm the prizes and shipping addresses. site works very well and is secure, so please feel confident in donating to the school and purchasing raffle tickets.