Lego Store!

We made it out for our adventure to the Lego store this weekend! We had no idea but during the hour that we arrived, they were having all the Star Wars characters in the store for shoppers to meet to help launch the Lego Star Wars Visual Dictionary. Too bad they had sold out of the book by the time we arrived. Still, it was a total highlight for the kids!

Mason was scared to death of Darth so he would NOT get in this picture to save my soul. The other kids were quite pleased though. I think this picture is going to be framed for a certain little boys room. (After I figure out where I went wrong with that light balance.)

Despite the look of some of these pictures, the store was PACKED! I was actually pretty glad we were there toward the end of the event because it was physically difficult to move around and look at the products! Once the hour was winding down, it got easier to go find what I was looking for.

Here is the one character Mason would appear with - as long as Grammy was in the picture too. (That white balance thing again - no one was actually sick even though they might look it in these pictures.)

I thought it was fun to see some of the creations the store employees had created. Some were from the kits but several were freestyle and pretty inspiring. I thought a Lego pumpkin was a great idea! If I had more orange bricks, I might attempt one. Maybe we'll have a collection by next year.

Since the store is about an hour away, I won't be going back too frequently. That's why we loaded up on some items for our collection. I had a list of things we needed and then I let the kids pick out $10 worth of kit stuff each.

Case is celebrating a birthday next month so Grammy went ahead and let him pick out his birthday present while we were there. The boy is so excited to put it together! Pictures to come of the finished creation.

Organizing Legos

This week we (read I) spent two days sorting and organizing legos. I only did a basic sort because - let's face it - the kids are going to mix them all back together tomorrow.

However, I'm hoping to take them to the Lego store this weekend so I wanted to have a good understanding of which items we had plenty of and where there were gaps in our collection. It was good to see because I would have guessed wrong in a few areas! I decided to sort our legos by basic size and function. Since my kids aren't going to be designing fabulouse 'scapes (yet) where the block colors are relevant, I decided to sort them according to basic sizes while they are learning to build. I'm sure the sort method will change eventually but this is where we are today.

First, I pulled out all the big one-of-a-kind type bricks that obviously came in a kit when owned by the previous owners. All those (and some smaller ones that I didn't realize I should sort out) went into this big ottoman that we use as a seat around our big red table. We have three of these and previously all the legos were in the three ottoman storage units. I found them at Kohl's during the back to school season and they were being marketed to kids going to live in a dorm. Whatever! I knew they'd be perfect for our little room!


I found these little trays earlier this week in the dollar spot at Target. Although I likely wouldn't feed my kids anything off them, I knew they'd be great for holding bits during craft time. Turns out, they also make great devices to sort legos! Four drawers of my 9 drawer Sterilite tower have legos stored in them like this - temporarily until I find permanent storage bins for little bits.

Then the bottom four drawers hold basic lego sizes. Bottom one is plates, next is long and lean (all the legos that are only one across), next drawer is wheels and the top drawer of the four is all your basic block sizes.

Next I have to show you Ashlee's latest creation. Here is the front.

Here is the back. I thought it looked pretty awesome.

Then there is Case. I spotted one creation the other day and thought it looked awfully cool. It looked to me like he'd created himself a hamburger. So I mentioned to him that I thought that was mighty cool. He replied, "Yeah, it's the Krusty Krab burger!" Then I walked in to the room today to see the burger in this little vignette. Love that!

Modest beginnings

Welcome to our adventure. I am the mother of three children. My daughter is turning 8 next month, my son is turning 6 next month and my other son is 4. My middle child received a lego kit last year for his birthday and my youngest child received a big tub of legos in May for his birthday. And that was the absolute beginning of their love of these little bricks.

Two months ago, some older boys in our neighborhood passed along a box full of their legos that they had outgrown. What a gift! Thank you to Zack, Jeremy, Evan and Alex. We have been playing non stop ever since. So much so, that I recently turned our livingroom into our homework and lego room. It is where we spend the most time these days. Between craft projects, homework, Girl Scouts and the never ending lego creations, we are all quite happy there.

Currently, I'm looking for ideas that would be appropriate ways to run a lego club for the age group we are in now. I looked at Jr. First Lego League and it's a little more advanced than we are. Besides, if I'm going to spend $25 related to this hobby, it's going to be on BRICKS! LOL.

My plans for this blog are to share with other parents of young children anything I learn that might help you along with documenting my children's creations. I'm sure they will be elementary at first but hopefully the skills and creativity will grow and they will become quite talented at something that is both educational and keeps them out of trouble! It seems to me that everything I've found thus far on the web are too advanced for the fun-yet-educational aspects of what I'm hoping to achieve. So, if you know some simple ideas for stimulating creative play for children these ages, please share. I'd love to know about them.