Lego Catalogs and Buildings

Joaquin’s love for building with Legos brought a new interest in browsing Lego catalogs and discussing our opinions over the advertised sets together. This led him to create his own pretend catalogs, and seek to discuss all his imagined products in the same way. The activity is a rich exercise in imagination—one that after two-hour-long conversations over purely imagined stuff inspired me to create a variation and visual aid for us.

In order to have something for me to look at and fuel diverse thoughts for our discussions, I suggested us making real catalogs from magazine photos. We cut, paste, stamp, write, imagine… And since one of his main motivations is the number of pieces we assign to each set, I’ve introduced the use of reasoning and analytical skills to this exercise: We talk about what we see in the picture, analyze it, make a list of different components, estimate the number of blocks for each one, add them up, and even multiply sometimes. He LOVES it!

Interestingly, just after two days of playing with this activity, Joaquin started building on his own from a photo (something I’ve wanted to inspire him to do vs. always following building instructions). He built “Casa Formal” from my catalog without any building instructions or help. The build is his own creative interpretation, but it clearly shows that he used the photo as a reference. This is new for him.

And then he was off. Very motivated to create a book of his own creations, he built some amazing original buildings. All of his own; no reference needed.

For this grocery store (a 433-piece Experienced Build of the Museum set), I experimented with giving him a list of design requirements. He loved it and built to meet all requirements—a little purposeful designer in the making!