It's been going on for days and Ethan started it. Ethan has never been particularly interested in Lego before. I mean, he's played with them of course, but was never particularly drawn to them. This weekend Dennis was unable to get him out of store without a huge, public fit he asked for a set at the mall. When he got in the house he carefully laid it all out and began building. He started at Step 1 and assembled the set like an expert!
I was really surprised at how adept he was at reading the directions. In Lego schematics, you need to be able to discern which pieces are newly placed from one step to the next, identify that piece independant of the final product, and place it in the right place. I haven't seen him give that much attention to detail in a long time. I am shocked and pleased with his building skills!
Then, the rest of the pack hopped on the Lego train. There is always some quiet, small-scale Lego assembly going on in the basement, but this was full-on-build-mode. Since we have a storehouse of Lego sets under the basement stairs Gavin selected the Lego Star Wars: Trade Federation MTT. A complex set with thousands of tiny pieces that must be ordered exactly right to provide all the movement aspects. Mikey chose to build a freestyle a house that had practical aspects and lots of asthetic components. Sean copied Mikey in a smalled scale. Turns out Legos are capable of exposing personality traits!
My kids could tell you that a 2X8 brick had 16 knobs before they knew what multiplication was and how you could substitute two 2X2s for a lost 2X4. Mikey played with Lego Mosiac, learning to move from left to right and top to bottom without knowing this skill would be required for reading. Legos foster both regimented, accurate direction following as well as the endless creative ways that bricks can be used to form nearly anything.
So build with us, break out your Legos or come over here and 'play well'!
(urban legend tells that the danish words leg godt (pronounced le-go) means 'play well'.)
I never knew where the word Lego came from! Very cool! We have my brother's old sets of Legos and the girls go in stages...we try to make it to the mall for the free set on the first Tuesday of the month.
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