Promoting Creative Play and Learning with Lego®

I have yet to meet a child who doesn’t love playing with anything Lego®, and my daughter is no exception. You’ll often find her in her room quietly building and playing with all her Lego® pieces.

I’ve always known there were many benefits to construction play. (Through construction play children learn about themselves, while strengthening their logic and reasoning skills. Construction play also promotes creativity and also helps children develop a sense of pride for their completed creations.) But, I didn’t realize just how many more skills my child was developing when playing with this type of toy. 

Creating with Lego® Friends

Recently I sat down with my six year old daughter and created with her using the Lego® Friends Heartlake Juice Bar set. (If you’re not familiar with Lego® Friends, it’s a collection of building sets that blend the iconic LEGO® construction experience with stories, settings and themes designed to meet children’s desire for creativity and a highly-detailed, character-based world.) It was so much fun spending time together creating, but my favorite part was learning about how my daughter plays.

After Lucy excitedly opened the box and took out all the colorful bricks and pieces, I reached for the manual showing how to build the juice bar. Lucy immediately said, “Mom! We don’t need that! I like to build my own stuff!” I never knew she had developed so much confidence in her creating!

So we each took a few pieces and started building. This was the first thing she built. She said this girl was waiting for the grand opening of our juice bar. She placed her right next to us so she could observe the juice bar being built.

We did actually use the manual to create some of the special pieces in the set. I was so proud seeing how she was able to follow the directions on her own. Here she is adding stickers to the juice bar sign.

It was so neat to see Lucy figure out how to get the juice bar sign to stay on her creation all on her own. She tried a few different ways before she found one that worked. I love how she didn’t give up!

Playing with Lego® Friends

I think my absolute favorite part of playing and creating with Lucy was getting to observe just how much these sets encourage her imaginative play! Do you remember that Lego® Friend standing by waiting for the construction from earlier? Well, Lucy made her talk and walk around all throughout our constructing time. “When’s this going to be done? What’s this you’re building here?” It cracked me up!

And after building lots of creations, Lucy had a blast playing. Here she created a dance floor. All the colored dots represent where the character is to place her feet to do her dance.

Even after I eventually left to get dinner going, Lucy was still playing. I couldn’t believe how much storytelling this play set inspired! Construction play really does encourage creative play in addition to all kinds of learning and creativity.

 What is your favorite thing about playing with Lego®?

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.