Yes, yes indeed. Legos are a great resource to be used in a homeschool setting.
Lest you think I’ve been sniffing the plastic, let me explain.
First of all, part of brain development is based on the child’s understanding of how to take a flat object and fold it up into something three-dimensional. By taking flat blocks and building them up into a plane or a house or an animal, your child’s brain is being exercised.
Second, it’s good for a child’s brain to envision a finished product and then to work toward that goal, using the materials at hand.
Third, by using blocks that take up various amounts of space, your child’s math skills come into play as he envisions what he wants to build and how large it’s going to be, and then chooses the blocks that will fill in that space.
Fourth, again using those math skills, if he knows he wants his creation to be twenty studs high and he has blocks that are four studs each, he learns that he will need five of those blocks, and so on.
Fifth, any time a child is doing something tactile, it connects the brain and the hands together in really amazing ways. His dexterity is increased and his future ability to work with his hands is more guaranteed.
Sixth, there is nothing like creativity to help a child bloom and blossom. When he thinks out of the box, comes up with something all of his own, and then presents it to you for your admiration, it shows him that his ideas and his mind are of great value to you. This keeps him wanting to be creative, wanting to be unique, and it increases his self-esteem. To me, this is the biggest reason to love Legos. We live in a world where uniqueness is not appreciated and where self-esteem is hard to find. If we can help foster those things in a child with such a simple tool as plastic building toys, I’m all over that.
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