LEGO® and education may be a surprising combination for some teachers. Then again, maybe not!LEGO® bricks have been working their way into an increasing number ofcreative STEM activitiesin recent years, and LEGO® clubs are popping up in elementary schools all around the US. Planning a LEGO®-themed classroom or wondering how to use LEGO® in educational ways in your classroom? Looking for LEGO® activities that will motivate students who love building blocks?
From teaching sentence structure to coding, we’ve put together some of our favorite educational ways to use LEGO® bricks in the classroom.
LEGO® Education Ideas for Teachers
You may already have some of the LEGO® learning sets that are out there with all the bricks, wheels, and more you need for tinkering in the classroom. But what about that pile of LEGO® you have from your own childhood or that assortment you just picked up at a yard sale? Can you really use these in education too? Fast answer: Yes!
Let’s dive into a variety of ELA and math activities you can do with that random pile of bricks!
1. Teaching Lowercase and Uppercase Letters
This LEGO® education option puts more playtime into reading centers as students are given building bricks with uppercase and lowercase letters written on them. The goal: Students have to match up the capitals with their lowercase versions to improve theirletter identification skills.
Teach Starter Teacher Tip:Instead of using a permanent marker on each brick, write the letters on masking or painter’s tape so it can be easily removed.
2. Create Sight Word Towers
When you’re teaching students to recognize words from their sight words list, pull out that random assortment of LEGO® for an educational activity that will help build dexterity too!
With this LEGO® activity, students are given a variety of bricks that have been labeled with sight words, then challenged to build a tower. The goal is for students to say the word out loud, then add the corresponding brick to a tower, slowly building a tall tower that shows off their progress!
See more of our favoritesight word activities!
3. Sentence Structure Activity
Put your LEGO® pile to work to build those sentence writing skills! With this fun activity, students can pick from a range of noun-, verb-, and adjective-labeled building bricks to create a properly constructed sentence. Have a huge pile of bricks? Color code each word and even add punctuation marks to make this activity more complex!
When you’re done, give thesesentence structure activitiesa try!
4. Segment CVC Words
We’ve got one more ELA activity with a LEGO® twist for you! To set up this activity, all you need to do is grab a collection of legos and label them with individual letters. Using a list of CVC words, direct students to find the building bricks to create each word! This LEGO® activity can work with the cards from thisfun CVC bowling gameor cards from this Four in a Row CVC game!
5. Greater Than or Less Than?
Ready to take a turn into the land of mathematics? LEGO® have myriad uses for math centers, and one of our favorites makes use of the classicGreater/Less Than Crocodileand asimple set of number flashcards.
对于这个数学中心活动,学生照片k two numbers from a pile of number flashcards that has been shuffled. Students then build a LEGO® tower with each number and place the greater than or less than crocodile in the middle to show the relationship between the two. This can also be a great activity for students to do in pairs, with each student building their own tower, then comparing it to that of their classmate.
See moremath center activitiescreated by teachers.
6. Probability Play
Use the fact that you’ve got a random assortment of LEGO® to your advantage with an educational probability activity for your sixth and seventh graders! Determining the odds of something happening can be tough for students as it feels theoretical, so adding physical items into the mix can make this more concrete.
Fill small paper bags with an assortment of different colored bricks.
Tell students how many bricks are in each bag and provide a list of colors you’ve included — but don’t tell them how many of each colored brick is inside. Instead, charge your students with determining how likely it is they will be able to draw a brick of one specific color from the bag.
Next, allow them to draw a LEGO® brick. With one less brick in the bag, how does it change the odds of finding their original colored brick?
7. Figuring Fractions
Grab the LEGO® and your dice for a fun fractions game!
- Select a pile of LEGO® in a variety of colors plus two dice.
- Students roll the dice — the smaller number on one dice is the numerator of the fraction, and the larger number represents the denominator.
- Then ask the students to use the Lego bricks to create that fraction using different colored bricks.
- For example, if a child rolled a 4 and 1, they would use one red brick and 3 yellow bricks the same size to show 1/4.
Uncover our favoritefraction activities!
8. Informal Measurement
In this LEGO® math activity, students get to use a fun measurement tool — a tower of building bricks! Students can build a small tower out of bricks, then estimate how many bricks items around the room — such as a candy jar — might be if measured in bricks.
If it’s a hit, try thisclover measurement activityfor a lucky spin!
8. Skip Counting
Using masking tape, write numbers on a series of bricks, skipping digits along the way to help students to learn to count by 2s, 5s, 10s, and so on. With thisskip counting activity, students then put the LEGO® bricks in order by creating a tower! This could also be done with different multiples when practicing multiplication.
9. Sorting and Classifying
比较和对比templa使用我们的维恩图te (print one, here), students practice sorting and classifying a pile of building bricks. This is a great way to discuss similarities and differences between objects.
More Building Brick Resources for Teachers
Love building bricks so much that you want to theme your entire classroom around this favorite? You can do that too, with a little help from Teach Starter. Download and print resources for the job now:
- Printablebrick classroom decorations
- Printablebrick name tags for student desks, cubbies, or lockers
- Printablebrick bulletin board borders
