LEGO.com Parents Family Together : Everyday Activities

LEGO® Day at Afterschool

Verena, the Austrian LEGO® Ambassador and proud mother of two LEGO girls, shares how her family’s LEGO building activity turned into a LEGO Day at her daughter’s afterschool program.

Verena, 33 lives in Vienna, Austria with her husband Tom and their two girls Lea and Dina. She organizes seminars and international conferences for a living. In her leisure time Verena passionately builds with LEGO bricks, organises LEGO events in Austria, and helps running the Austrian LEGO Club .

How did you discover LEGO bricks and what do you think is unique about LEGO bricks?

I fondly recall my little brother and me playing with LEGO bricks as a kid. It was always fun to build new things but also to take the bricks apart and start all over again. That’s what makes LEGO bricks so special to me. Only your mind sets the limitations on your playing and building.

The cool thing about LEGO bricks is that I can build together with my girls. Of course they love to build on their own, but it’s the greatest fun when all of us build together. It’s great to see how enthusiastic they are to learn new building techniques in order to build things they thought were impossible before. It’s truly astonishing to see their imagination come alive through new ways of building their LEGO creations.

My husband and I can see them getting better and better and how proud they are when they finished a model and get the chance to show it at a LEGO exhibition. Kids have so many options when it comes down to playing and learning today, but often they only stick to one thing (e.g. TV or computer games). I think it’s our task as parents to stimulate their imagination and show them how diversified life can be.

How did your husband and you engage your daughters in playing and building with LEGO sets?

These days LEGO bricks play an important role in our family. But actually we were off to a modest start. In the beginning our girls played with a handful of LEGO Primo and Duplo bricks. They loved their ball track and Winnie the Pooh figures.

The first “grown up” LEGO sets they got were two castles my husband bought on eBay. We found out the LEGO Castles were too much too soon as our girls were not really fond of them. Actually, they took them back to my husband and me two days later and told us “it’s not a fun toy, it always crashes.” They were simply too young at that time.

However, my husband was on fire and began building with the LEGO bricks – well, yes I know often I have “3 kids” at home. He bought more LEGO bricks and built amazing things just from his imagination. It was really fascinating and soon I wanted to do more than just watch him. We spent hours and full weekends building.

Our kids enjoyed watching the big LEGO towers we were building at that time but still weren’t interested in playing with us. It wasn’t until they were about 7 and 8 years old they joined the LEGO fun. They began asking what we were building and why and how it was done. To stimulate their curiosity we gave them some of the LEGO bricks we didn’t use and immediately they were asking for more LEGO bricks. All the sudden their wish lists for Christmas and their birthdays always included LEGO sets. In the beginning they mostly played with their sets but were eager to build their own creations. At that point we began to build together, as they often had great ideas but simply needed a little help to realise them.

What inspired you to set up the LEGO day at your daughter’s afterschool program?

We saw how other kids reacted when they visited us and found a room full of LEGO bricks. Usually they started playing regardless of whether or not they had any LEGO bricks at home or had never played with them before.

Once again my husband and I saw for ourselves that kids really enjoy playing together – including all the smiles, fights, crashes, and tears of course. When some of our friends told us that their kids - some of them couch potatoes interested in nothing but watching TV or playing video games, had taken up playing with LEGO bricks at home again - we got the idea to make a “LEGO Day” at our girls' afterschool program.

At the afterschool program they have a LEGO corner and we knew that at least some of the kids played used the corner often. We introduced the tutors to the idea and they really liked it. Next, the biggest challenge was to get enough LEGO bricks in order for 20+ kids to play with. Our girls were very generous and lent us their two big boxes full of LEGO bricks.

We also bought some smaller LEGO creator sets. The kids really enjoyed building and with a huge variety of LEGO bricks and we really had an inspiring afternoon and built a lot of great creations. The feedback in the days after that made us happy and made everything so worthwhile. Everyone enjoyed it and the kids soon began to ask if there would be another LEGO Day.

So this autumn we’ve decided that it will once again be time for a LEGO Day. My husband, our daughters and I are excited about playing with the kids again and inspiring them to come up with more amazing LEGO creations.

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BUILDING TIPS

What advice and tips do you have for other parents or grandparents who would like to set up their own LEGO Day?

Based on my family's experiences here are a few tips and hints to set up an engaging LEGO Day:

1. Build and play together with your kids: It’s enjoyable for all of you, especially in the beginning when the kids might need inspiration and building tips.

2. Forget about thinking you aren’t talented enough to build LEGO creations: Of course you are, you just have to find your way to build. Some prefer construction manuals. You can find a lot of them on the internet . Others prefer to build from their imagination. So simply sit down with a box of LEGO bricks and do it.

3. Listen to your kids: They’ll tell you what they like to build and appreciate it if you respect their ideas and wishes. Let them build in their own way. Sometimes it’s hard for an adult to accept things like; swimming pools with pink water, cars with 8 wheels, and wings or houses with doors and rooms too small for LEGO MiniFigs to stand upright in. We tend to correct the kids but they have their own way of seeing the world and you should really leave it to them. Try it and enjoy the process of building.

4. Let your kids surprise you!

Email us YOUR ideas at parents@lego.com!

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Footnotes:
¹ http://www.lugnet.at/
² http://news.lugnet.com/build/

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