Teach at home Thursday : Lego Learning!

Peanut loves Legos (hence his birthday theme), Peanut hates homework. In order to help him and work with Pumpkin on some learning skills I combined the two. I learned this activity when I was student teaching as a way for kinesthetic learners (children who learn by physically manipulating their body or materials to process and learn the material) to have an easy, quiet way to learn and manipulate the material.

You will need a bunch of Lego Duplo blocks (you could use regular Lego's but they are really small and hard to write on) and a roll of tape. Any tape will do but I prefer masking, it is easy to write on and doesn't leave any residue behind.

The first activity that I did with Peanut (it was more of a review) was letter identification, using the blocks on each one I put a piece of tape and wrote the capital letters. I would tell him a word and he not only had to tell me what that word started with but the sound as well. After the letter/sound recognition we practiced ABC order, by stacking the blocks.

Using the blocks with the letters again, we practiced basic sight words, I put the words together and he had to read the word to me.

We then moved onto sentences. Using the sight words from his list that he must know, we built sentences together. Peanut had to read the sentence before he was able to move onto a new one. He loved the idea of building a sentence.

Not once during this entire process did I hear him complain about how boring homework is, or why do I have to do this? It was a good night in our house!

Onto Math,  we did another simple warm up this time. The first was to find the numbers and put them in order up to 25.

I purposely matched the numbers to the amount of "bumps" I wasn't sure what to call them, so Peanut said they remind me of camel bumps. We then took 15 minutes to talk and discuss that they are called humps not bumps on a camel. At the end it was still bumps!  In the picture you can see that I matched the numbers to the bumps, as the numbers starting getting larger and odd, they no longer matched up, so we took a few minutes and sorted them, match not match! It was a nice little mental break for him and gave me a chance to get my next part of the activity ready.

Now came addition. Using the "bumps" as the number to use, he had to create a number sentence and then show the answer or sum by using Legos. It took him a minute to grasp exactly what I wanted him to do but once he got it was smooth sailing and he then had to write the number sentence underneath.

You could do this same activity with the number of bricks as opposed to the number of bumps. Either way you are practicing the skills and that is what is important!

After practicing his math facts we moved onto to different ways to represent a number. Using one duplo block with a number written on it, and another duplo block with a series of dots on it, he had to match them up!

We didn't use them on this particular day but I did a Google search to find Lego math activities and found a great resource that you can download from Walking By the Way.  She created graphs where you can graph your Legos, sort your Legos, even practice multiplication.

Lapbook Lessons is another great site with a ton of Lego themed skills to practice. Both sites have great printables, I saved and printed both sets as they not only have different activities but different ways the same skills are presented!

For Pumpkin, I did three small activities, the first was to just sort the Legos into the color piles and practice saying the colors: Green, Yellow, Blue, Red, etc. Pumpkin has a hard time with her speech, so anyway I can incorporate her having to speak is great! Once, we were done sorting, I counted the Lego bricks, I didn't expect her to be able to count or identify the numbers but hearing and seeing me point to the bricks is just the first step.

The next activity I did with her was to create a series of three bricks and have her try and copy the same set.  They were easy, just two red and a green, three red. The idea was to have her practice matching and trying to recreate, this is a easy task to practice and will help her when it comes time to letter and number recognition and also being able to write.

The last activity we did was to create her name and then had her practice saying it with us.

It was a Lego Learning night and a fun activity that I hope to do many more times with my kiddos again. If you are looking for duplos for free or cheap, check out your local craigslist or freecycle. I got a bag of 200 blocks three weeks ago for a dollar!

http://www.homestoriesatoz.com/2011/09/tutorials-tips-link-party-29.html/trackback