Educating Risa

Over the month of November, the boys took a 4-part Lego building class, from the people at Bricks 4 Kidz. The class was arranged by my friend and fabulous homeschooling Mom Lisa, who also hosted it at her house. It was loosely tied to the ‘building things’ portion of the Alberta curriculum, looking at principles in architecture and engineering. My kids had never done anything like this before—it was a good stretch for them. Daegan enjoyed the class enough that he would like to do another one later on; Gareth would prefer to stick to building Pokemon characters with his Lego at present.

The kids worked in partners—most kids paired with their sibling. (It was 6 sets of siblings in the class of 12 kids—11 boys and 1 girl!) They got a kit with the pieces they’d need, and a booklet outlining step-by-step how to put the piece together. The kids were thus able to help one another if one of the pair got stuck. There was also an instructor to assist, and a big bucket of cool Lego pieces for free building once the project of the week was complete.

The first week they built the Eiffel Tower:

The second week was a windmill, including hooking it up to a motor to make it spin. Daegan got so excited when he finally got the connections the right way so it spun—so did he in the pic.

The third week they made a see-saw (teeter-totter), and the fourth a turnstile with lots of gears. Again, both projects hooked up to motors to move:

Thanks again to Lisa for setting up this class and hosting.