There are lots of great things you can do to learn with Lego. Maybe you’re worried that your child spends too much time building and not enough learning? Well here are lots of great ideas to get kids excited about learning and adults understanding how useful Lego can be.
Table of Contents
STEM – Learn Using Lego
Simple Machines
A lot of Lego building includes making simple machines to do certain tasks. Challenge your kids to try some of these machines below.
Lego Pulley System
There are lots of options of a Lego pulley system. What you will definitely need are wheels (with tyres removed) for the pulley part, along with bricks and axles to attach the pulley device. These are then built into a tower or wall.
Create a basket with Lego bricks and have at least one brick with holes at the top of the basket to attach the string. Loop the string from the basket over the pulley to pull up the load.
Lego Conveyor Belt
This is a fun idea to try! A Lego conveyor belt can be created in multiple different ways, I direct you across to Frugal Fun 4 Boys And Girls. They’ve even made a great video to show you how to do it.
Lego conveyor belts can be created using a vehicle track or simply a felt piece of material looped around. You will need various Lego Technic pieces to help create the mechanics and potentially a motor if you want it to work on its own.
Spinning Tops
Spinning tops are fun to create and there’s so many possibilities you can try. The basic premise is having a flat piece with a balanced design on top (symmetrical is best) and then using an axle or technic pin for the top to spin on.
There are so many options of how to build the spinners and it can be a fun challenge to see which design works best and spins longest.
Lego Catapult
To create a Lego catapult is a challenge. There are plenty of designs online, but perhaps just asking the kids to come up with their own design is best?
You can use Lego bricks with an axle or Lego Technic bricks to build the structure. If you would like more tension for the catapult then an elastic band may be a useful addition.
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Lego Balance
A Lego balance is a fun machine to create and then excellent as a maths tool. To make a balance you will need to build a tower with a brick with a hole through it at the top. Which a Lego axel can be place in and then attaching two long technic bricks that can pivot on the axel. The baskets will be attached to each end of the long technic bricks.
Problem Solving – Learn Using Lego
Disaster Island
Challenge the kids with Disaster Island! First head to this link to print out disaster cards to use. Get the children to create their own island however they want. Then use the disaster cards in the link to create problems for the kids to solve.
It’s interesting to see how they choose to solve the problems! Most disasters can be averted in some way and the kids get to work out how.
Build a House on Stilts
Talk to the children about climate change and the possibility of rising sea levels around the world. Discuss why some people already have built their houses on stilts as they live on the water.
Then challenge the children to build their own house on stilts from Lego. It’s not as easy as it seems, supporting larger structures on stilts is difficult work!
Marble Maze
Take a large Lego base plate and use Lego blocks to create a maze. The maze can be as difficult as you would like, but make sure that a marble can fit between the pieces.
Give the maze to someone else to see if they can complete it!
Lego dam building
Stop the water from flooding the village! Ask the kids to build some Lego houses and place them somewhere outside or in a watertight basin indoors.
Use Lego hinges to attach a base plate to a wall of Lego bricks around 4-5 bricks high. This inclined plate is where the water will run down toward the village. Build a dam on the inclined plate to keep the floodwaters back from the village.
Other STEM Engineering
Lego Sundial
A very simple Lego project. All you need is a base plate and a tall tower to act as the shadow marker. Place the sundial outside on a sunny day and for each hour of the day place a Lego block where the shadow is. This will create a sundial that actually tells the time!
Landmark Buildings
Look at various landmarks around the world on the computer. Then attempt to create some of these landmarks. This can be done with Duplo as well as basic Lego bricks!
Think the Eiffel Tower, Colosseum, Parthenon, Great Pyramids, Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China and Machu Picchu. You can also extend this project and learn more about each landmark in the process.
Lego Race Cars
Challenge the kids (and yourself!) to build a Lego racing car. They should have a sail on top to use for wind power. Race your cars and find out who’s built the best car or time the cars to get from point A to point B, find out who’s fastest!
Maths – Learn Using Lego
Simple Addition
There are tons of Lego addition printables online, just have a quick google to find them. But you can also do this yourself. Get your children to add together two or more bricks using the bumps on the top, then writing it down on paper.
Use as Math blocks, tens and units
Using a large Lego base plate make a number out of Lego blocks at the top. Then make squares at the bottom of the plate out of Lego for the ‘tens’ and ‘units’. For example 26, which would have 2 blocks together in the tens square (or 2 stacks of 10) and 6 blocks in the units.
Lego Fractions
Lego really lends itself to fractions. Just choose a larger piece such as a 2×4, then you can use 2 2×2 blocks to show halves of a whole, 4 2×1 blocks for quarters and 8 1 blocks to show 1/8ths.
Really simple, but easy for kids to understand visually!
Art
Lego Paint Machine
This can be created with Duplo or Lego. You will need a piece of Lego that rotates, such as that from a crane or a technic wheel. This will be placed at the top of the tower so that it can spin around. Attach a long piece of Lego to the spinning section and use blue tack or similar to attach a brush to the bottom of the longer Lego piece. Make sure the brush can touch the paper, if not make the tower slightly shorter or taller as necessary.
Dip the brush in paint, and then spin the tower manually to create various circles.
A similar machine can be created for pendulum painting. You will need to create a narrow bridge shape out of bricks and then attach a small paper cup with string to the bridge. This can then be filled with paint, a small hole pierced under the cup and then spun in a circle or back and forth to create a dropping pendulum painting.
Lego Printing
This is a very basic type of art, but is perfect for younger children. Simply choose some bricks, Duplo works best for smaller hands. Then dip the bricks in paint and start printing on the paper.
Children may choose any side of the Lego blocks to print with and create whatever design they like.
Language – Learn using Lego
Lego Stop Motion
There are many stop motion apps that you can download. Using the app children can create their own stories with Lego pieces and characters. The stories can also include written signs in the background and audio recorded by the children.
It’s like an online storybook and something many kids love creating!
Lego Sentences
For children practicing reading it could be fun to stick different words to Lego blocks. Then challenge them to create sentences using the words, by sticking them to a base plate or other blocks in a wall.
Lego Codes
Create your own Lego code by writing out the letters of the alphabet on a piece of paper and then placing a small piece of Lego next to each letter. Each Lego piece must be different to the others in either shape or colour and you will need multiples of each piece!
Once your code is created make a message for someone else and challenge them to work out what it says using your code!
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