I've been running a Lego program of one kind or another for many years and I've judged it's success mainly by the smiles and engaged brickbuilding of the boys and girls who attend. Legos=Fun. Period. Except for me. I was BORED. Very very very very bored. Something needed to change. I read a lot, as you know. Recently, I happened upon a new Makerspace idea using Legos and literacy. Lego was offering a Librarians Toolkit! Yay! I decided to give it a whirl. To start, I followed their curriculum to a "T". Low and behold.... it has been one of the MOST successful Lego programs ever! Adding a literacy (read aloud) element to Lego building is work. Book choices for a group of K-5 who have a tempting bin of bricks in front of them is a tremendous challenge. The planning, the timing, and the coordination takes effort. But the children patiently cooperated and loved every minute of it! After a few sessions, I decided to add a technology element to the program as well and it's been a hit. Using an iPad I connected relevant videos, to watch on the big screen. For example, after we read Moonshot by Brian Floca, we watched the actual NASA Apollo lift-off followed by the Apollo 11 landing and moon walk. The kids (and the parents that stay) were riveted! This week I used a little magical wordless picture book. We built our own magical places and talked a bit about wordless books and interpreting pictures (art) of author Aaron Becker. They built amazing things and better yet they "saw" the art and books in ways that were truly unique. It really is all about the journey and creating your own magical place. Lego club is mine again!
2 Comments
Marie
1/23/2015 03:37:12 am
Great idea!!
Reply
BookGirl
3/24/2015 08:46:49 am
Thanks Marie!
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
April 2017
Categories
All
|