How Lego helps children learn
OLIVEDALE – While at home with your children engage with them through playing with Lego as it is more educational than you think. Here is why, according to local non-profit, Care for Education.
There is substantial evidence that children learn more through play than they would in a more conventional academic setting.
The handling of concrete material is essential to the young child’s concept development and children need a variety of tools and activities that will enable them to use and develop their senses.
Toys that are used for learning contribute to the acquisition of knowledge and there is a large variety of such toys. Lego ultimately provides one of the most reliable and predictable tools for cognitive learning because of its clutch power and ability to encourage imaginative, creative, bigger and stronger constructions.
There are many ways to play with a set of Lego. These pieces allow for unlimited open-ended, creative building possibilities. The brightly coloured pieces and easily interlocking combinations provide hours of designing, making and testing. The construction and interactions with Lego Duplo bricks stimulates problem solving, logic, creativity, imagination, social interaction, and creative expression in both boys and girls.
When a parent, caregiver or teacher gets involved in this play, other social, emotional and cognitive skills are enhanced. Parents can play a huge part in directing and challenging their children, progressively teaching them through hands-on learning. Through this type of collaborative learning, a number of numeracy and literacy skills are also developed – all of this just by playing.
Physical and motor movement is integrated with a child’s development and has important cognitive benefits. The relationship between movement and learning continues throughout life.
Complex movements engage areas of the brain used for problem solving, planning, and sequencing. Using the Lego bricks in daily games which encourage motor development and coordination, allow fine, gross, perceptual motor development and spatial awareness to take place.
By instigating playful and constructive opportunities, parents and caregivers provide physical and motor experiences for young children in which they have a chance to practise, get feedback and have a broad range of experiences and challenges. Lego can be used in activities which encourage language development and are a great tool for storytelling activities. As the children imaginatively build a character from a storybook or build an ending to an exciting tale, they are using language first inside their minds as they plan and organise their story.
This is followed by telling their story to their friends and perhaps adapting and refining their ideas. Children learn from following directions, creating a sequence of activities and gain satisfaction in completing a construction or project.
Lego Duplo brick activities provide creative ways of thinking in children by building on their natural talents for exploration and curiosity. Providing them with these tools for learning, as well as a safe and happy environment in which this type of play can take place, could have a significant impact on building the foundations for their future learning.
