LEGO challenges

During these last few weeks of school, the Bumblebees have been working their way through a LEGO challenge. Each day they receive the choice of two new LEGO challenges. They can choose one or both challenges or to choose from another day, one they did not try. The challenges might be something like you and four friends are trapped on a desert island. Design and build a boat to get you all safely home. Or it might be you are in a contest to build the tallest tower. Or you and your friends decide to design and build a tree house. 

Each day the Bumblebees use their skills to create something new. They have to design their structure, keeping in mind the limitations of the LEGOs they have at home, build it, evaluate it, change it if it needs changing and then evaluate it to ensure it meets the criteria of the challenge.

In both intended and unintended contexts and uses, LEGO lets kids exercise creativity and learn some fundamentals of engineering—almost in spite of themselves. “Math and physics concepts are built into every LEGO project,” says Tiffany Tseng, a graduate researcher in the MIT Media Lab Lifelong Kindergarten group. 

“Kids can build whatever’s in their imagination and, at the same time, develop spatial reasoning and learn about structural integrity, design, and a practical sense of geometry.” 

– From the MIT school of engineering website