Do We Really Need this Ad Campaign?

LEGO® kicked off the “Rebuild the World” campaign in 2019 and has continued it into 2020. They recently put out a new commercial. If you’re reading this post, odds are you don’t need the commercial to be enticed to buy LEGO® products. Does the rest of the public need it?

My personal opinion… Don’t make the commercial and knock some price off a few sets with the money you saved from not making the commercial. That’s just me though. What do you think? Is this an effective ad campaign? Does this really get people to buy more LEGO® products.

Here’s the most recent ad from November 2020 if you haven’t seen it…

Visiting an Open LEGO® Display in 2020 - Gartenschau - Kaiserslautern, Germany

The Gartenschau in Kaiserslautern was closed in early 2020 as COVID-19 first hit Germany. Thankfully, it re-opened and I finally was able to get there to see the updated LEGO® display. So we donned our masks and went in…

Before moving on, here are the links to the previous visits I’ve had to the Gartenschau:
2018, 2019 (part 1), 2019 (part 2)

Here’s the welcome sign. It says die große LEGO® ausstellung (the large LEGO® display) and it is hosted by Lauter Steine E.V. If you live locally, I believe it closes on 31 October and then re-opens in April.

The start of the display had a few cases with some MOCs. Some of the minifigures had masks added to them.

Next up, a large MOC of a 2x4 red brick. Then there was another case with a few MOCs and some sets.

In that case (shown above) were a few MOCs designed by Daniel Krentz. He was the designer of the #375 LEGO Classic Yellow Castle (shown below). Daniel passed away in 2016. There were a few MOCs from Daniel in the case purchased during a Fairy Bricks fundraiser.

The first picture looks like a Native American totem pole only out of bricks and in various build styles.

Next is a case with some train MOCs and some Formula 1 race car MOCs. The bottom has the VW Bus set with some VW MOC. Further down is a space shuttle.

There was no sign next to this one, but it looks like a recreation of the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. It’s a very impressive build!

I apologize for the reflection and lighting. The displays have plexiglass in front of them (smart move) and the lighting is not meant for cameras.

This MOC has been there previously and is a western US scene from the 1800s or so. I like the use of the wallpaper background incorporated with the brick background.

I wasn’t as big of a Castle fan as a kid so I’m not sure if these next pictures are sets or MOCs, but they are in the Castle theme.

I didn’t see a sign next to this one, but perhaps this is a MOC of an actual castle in Germany? The German flag is on top of the main structure so maybe.

This MOC was there last year and it’s a build of the electricity plant of the city of Kaiserslautern in 1894. I like the hot air balloon to mix things up a bit from the industrial look. I’m also a fan of the tall smoke stack they build. I’m curious if it is brick only or if there is a supporting structure inside.

Here’s an impressive build of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. If you look closely, you an see some fun details like Santa Claus.

Here is another Berlin landmark. The Reichstag where the German Parliament meets. I saw this build at a show last year. The new addition this time is the park nearby with the LEGO logo in brick flower form.

Here is a MOC of the Fruchthalle in Kaiserslautern. It’s a music venue for performances. The MOC is built from ~80,000 bricks. It took about a year to build and was built in 2016. I’ll let you read the description in German in the picture below.

I’m not sure if this MOC is new or just hasn’t been displayed in the past few years, but I found it to be the most impressive one there this year. The Frankfurt train station. First picture is the sign on the display letting you know what it is.

Here’s the full display… or at least most of it. I like how they added in the mirrors so you could see the trains. I didn’t get any close ups of the trains, but they had a mix of sets (the Disney train) and a few MOC trains.

A few more pictures of the station. I think the main building is impressive. The curve they were able to recreate in brick is really impressive.

Added into the scene were many of the modular buildings. I didn’t see the Cafe Corner or Green Grocer, but they have the City Hall and a few of the less recent buildings.

Nearby were a few buildings that are re-creations of actual buildings in the Frankfurt area.

I don’t know if this is of an actual train station or not. If you zoom in on the sign, Reiichelsheim (Odenwald) is an actual place. Not sure if they just wanted the sign on the station or not.

The large recreation of the brick fence behind the train station is cool!

I saw these MOCs of Venetian buildings last fall. You can see a few more pictures of them here.

A Ninjago scene.

The city scene has remained a constant over the past few years, but every year they make some changes and throw in some new things. Like last year, they have a fair, a rural area with farms, a European style city center walking area, and a more downtown/urban area. This year included more lights to include LEDs in the modular buildings, a subway type train route (the trains weren’t running while we were there), and a new train station to name a few.

I’m trying out a new (to me) web feature. You should be able to click an arrow or swipe on your phone/tablet to advance through the city scene pictures. Let me know in the comments if it doesn’t work.

I believe this scene was there in previous years. It’s a European style town/city next to hill/mountain. I’m going to guess Bavaria… maybe? The detailing on this one is very impressive and I like the colors too.

An imperial ship from the Pirate’s theme and then some recreations from JK Brickworks.

Some brick built birds which appear to be pretty close to scale. They are designed by Felix Jaensch. You can see his work here on Flickr.

The Dom…

Here’s the Cologne Cathedral again. It’s been there every year that I have visited and I still find it to be an incredible MOC.

Here’s the room dedicated to the space themes (should be able to click through the pictures). There are Ice Planet, M-Tron, Futuron, a large MOC of a ship, and some MOCs in the various space theme styles. This room is awesome! It makes me want to build some MOCs to add to them. I was a huge M-Tron fan and still have my sets.

Here are some architecture themed sets and MOCs. The Statue of Liberty (#21042-1), a MOC of Christ the Redeemer (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), a version of the Taj Mahal, and a few churches.

Various MOCs on display.

Star Wars™ sets have to make an appearance. Here are a few of the UCS sets on display.

A tall brick skyscraper. The top is lit up with LEDs.

Here is the logo for SteinHelden.de. This is a store located on site and they have an online store (only ships within Germany). It loosely translates to “brick heroes” and the business is set up to employ the disabled. A number of the workers are in wheel chairs or have other disabilities. It’s a cool concept!

Here is a microscale representation of the city of Kaiserslautern. Specifically it is the Rathaus (City Hall) and the Pfaltztheater.

A larger scale version of the Burj Khalifa.

A large scene of ancient Egypt.

The western US circa 1800s.

Last display case with some modified sets to include some Ideas sets, the James Bond Car, and some Harry Potter sets. There are also some fighter jet and biplane MOCs on the bottom row.

Another awesome display this year. So glad I was able to visit despite all of the COVID-19 closures. Thanks to the team who puts this amazing exhibit on! Hope you enjoyed my picture tour.

Happy building!

A Peak Inside LEGO®'s Factories

In case you missed it, in late May 2020, LEGO posted a video to YouTube.com showing how they make and assemble minifigures. Specifically, this one follows the series 20 collectible minifigures. It was posted on a number of fan sites and has almost 5 million views at the time of this post so my guess is many have seen it already. If not, you can see it here or below.

A second video was posted on 12 July 2020. This one shows how LEGO DUPLO is made. It has just over 30,000 hits at the time of this post so my guess is most haven’t seen it yet. You can take a look below.

I hope LEGO continues this series of videos as it is interesting to see inside the factories.

What do you want them to show us next?

Happy building!

Another COVID Public Service Announcement - LEGO Jurassic World

LEGO released a public service announcement for LEGO Batman back in May. In July we have a new one. This one is from Jurassic World. I haven’t seen it shared elsewhere so enjoy if you have yet to see it.

Brick Production in Mexico and COVID Impacts

As the global pandemic continues, I hope you are all doing well and staying healthy. I have seen many fans of the brick find new time to build due to lock-down requirements. That has included increased orders of sets from LEGO® and limited supply due to the factory in Mexico shutting down. LEGO® has tried to keep up with demand by shipping products from Europe and Asia, but there are still a lot of sets out of stock/on back order status at LEGO® Shop @ Home. A mid-May 2020 status update is posted here. With July coming up soon, I was curious as to where things were at in Mexico with the plant that supplies North America.

First off, a quick background on LEGO® and Mexico. According to lego.com, production began in Mexico in 2006. After a failed partnership attempt, production was in-sourced and a factory was stood up in Monterrey, Mexico. That’s about a 140 mile drive from the US border with Texas.

I wasn’t able to find the exact date things shut down in Mexico, but it appears to be in the April 2020 time frame. If you have knowledge of when it was, let me know. This generated a lot of pressure from US businesses and the US government as many companies rely on parts and production that takes place in Mexico. As of 1 June 2020, Mexico allowed aerospace, defense, construction, and mining related industries to re-open. This was along with the companies related to food production, health care, and other essential companies.

So where does the LEGO® factory sit on that list? I’m not sure, but as much as I’m looking forward to picking up some sets that have been out of stock, I want the workers to be safe. I am willing to wait and I encourage you to do the same.

In the meantime, happy building… stay safe and healthy!

10 Reasons to Attend Brickworld Virtual 2020

Full confession… I have never attended a LEGO fan convention before. I have been to a few shows where people display their MOCs, but that’s about it.

I heard about Brickworld Virtual 2020 that was held back in April after the fact and was excited to see it would be held again in May. I registered online and “attended” my first fan convention on 16 May 2020.

A bit of history… Brickworld was started by Bryan Bonahoom and Adam Reed Tucker with its first show back in 2007. Since then it has grown to Brickworld Chicago convention/expo and then expos in Milwaukee, Ft. Wayne, outside of Detroit, and Indianapolis. It was recently purchased by Mark Larson who had the misfortune of buying it during a global pandemic.

Not willing to give up, Mark has put together a virtual convention. You buy a ticket ahead of time and at the time of the convention, you log into your account and can join various ZOOM rooms to see presentations, MOCs, and interact with other fans.

Before I get into my list, if you missed out you can still attend virtual shows on 27 June 2020, 31 October 2020, and 12 December 2020. So you didn’t miss out if this sounds cool.

If you need more persuasion, keep reading…

1. Interact with your fellow fans of LEGO in real time.

I don’t live near an English speaking LUG and I don’t have any friends who are AFOLs. My brick interactions are with my kids, with my Non-LEGO Spouse (NLS) who tolerates my obsession, and one sided interactions with Recognized LEGO Fan Media (RLFM). This show was a great opportunity to interact with fans like me and as far as I know, COVID is not transmitted over the internet.

Not going to lie… I was super pumped to be a fan after the “convention.” It’s great to see I’m not the only fan out there.

2. Minimal cost compared to attending Brickworld Chicago in person.

My ticket to attend was $9. Granted that didn’t include my internet service provider fee, but I pay that regardless so I don’t think it counts.

If I were to go to Brickworld Chicago, I’d have to fly the ~4,300 miles to Chicago, figure out lodging, transportation, food, and be 7 hours off of my normal time. Instead I hooked my NLS’s laptop up to the TV, entertained my kiddos for a bit, had dinner, got my kiddos to bed, and logged back in for more brick fun without spending any funds I wouldn’t have spent on a normal Saturday evening. No complaints from me there.

As a joke, the Brickworld website says parking is $50 per tire. I thankfully parked offsite and avoided that fee.

3. Participate in presentations by various experts in the LEGO fan world.

There were 10 presentations by various experts. The May show included the following:
-Fractals and Functions and Knots, Oh my! with Brian Hirt from LOLUG
-LEGO Vines with Barbara Hoel from WisLUG
-Homeschooling with LEGO bricks with Maddie Jones from VirtuaLUG
-Building LEGO Domes with Peter Strege from EuroBricks
-LEGO® – Community Q&A with Jan Beyer, Community Manager from the LEGO Company
-Train Community Roundtable led by Nate Flood from LOLUG
-LEGO® – My Life in LEGO Bricks with Sam Johnson from the LEGO Company
-Medieval Roofs by David Gregory from IndyLUG
-LEGO® – Build a Tower with Your Bricks by Bo Stjerne Thomsen from LEGO Chair of Learning
-Flexible Surfaces with Barbara Hoel from WisLUG

I wanted to attend most of these, but wanted to see other things too so I missed out on a bunch. My NLS home schools my oldest kiddo (even before COVID) so she attended the homeschooling presentation and got a few ideas for things to do in the future with school. You can see my LEGO based home school day here. I also caught the end of the Community Q&A and the full LEGO® – My Life in LEGO Bricks presentation, but I’ll mention them later. Some good info was shared by many. Thank you to those who presented!

4. See amazing fan built creations in real-time and interact with their designers

Modular City - Peter Strege

-If you missed the May 2020 Brickworld Virtual, you should check out his Flickr stream. It is here on Flickr. He makes some amazing MOCs to include some impressive building MOCs with cool domes and eye catching color schemes. Definitely take a look!

Bricks in the Middle - Kevin Hinkle

-I missed this one…

Great Ball Contraption (GBC) - Bob Luzenski

-More on this one later…

Star Wars® Creations - Carey Warren/Kevin Wagner

-I couldn’t find the display online that I saw to post a link to, but it was an impressive Tatooine display with the Cantina and creatures outside. I didn’t get to ask any questions because there was an excited young fan peppering the builder with questions. It’s all good. Great work and thanks for displaying!

Harry Potter® Creations - Eric Krans

-I found a clip of Eric’s display online. Go to the 2:45 mark if you don’t want to watch the whole thing to see the Harry Potter display. It’s pretty impressive and includes a lot of moving parts… some of which aren’t shown on the linked video. Thanks for displaying Eric!

Guilds of Historica - Eurobricks

-I didn’t spend too much time in this room, but the people involved in the Guilds of Historica forums in Eurobricks shared some of their builds. They had a schedule over the convention of who shared over which time block. I spent about 10 minutes watching a builder show his stuff. If you want to see more, you can check them out on Eurobricks here or on Flickr here.

Smurfs / Futurama - Kevin Lauer / Matt DeLanoy

-I did not see the Futurama display, but I did see the Smurfs display being shown by Kevin Lauer. I found an older post talking about it on the Brother’s Brick here. I’m not sure how much has changed since this older post, but it was cool to see. I spent most of the time watching it trying to explain to my 6 year old what Smurfs were…

Dragon Bricks & Activities - Alysa Kirkpatrick & Mark Haase

-I didn’t make it to this room…

Art and Mosaics - Abbie and EJ Bocan - AbbieDabbles

-I briefly checked into this room, but they were talking about some custom minifigures that they were selling. I didn’t spend much time here.

Still Life Creations / Blacklight Creations - Barbara Hoel

-I got to spend a few minutes in Barbara’s room when she was showing a blacklight creation. For those of you not familiar with Barbara’s work, you can see her Flickr page here. The display she showed was actually shown by the Beyond the Brick team back in November 2019. You can see that video here on YouTube. I wanted to ask a few questions, but my kiddos were ready to move on at that point. Barbara, I’ll bug you some other time…

Brick 101 - David Pickett

-I didn’t catch this one…

There was one other room and I’m not sure which one on the list it was. The individual was showing off a center build while explaining how to build various things. My kiddos were around when I went into the room and they didn’t find it interesting so we moved on. I would have liked to have watched for a bit to see if I could learn any good building techniques.

5. Hear from and ask questions to members of the LEGO Company

I think the LEGO Company has done a great job getting its employees out and about to interact with the fan community. With the pandemic, they’ve been doing lots of live streams and interviews with the RLFM teams around the globe so we get to hear about the company straight from the source. Brickworld Virtual had multiple LEGO Company employees present, but I only caught part of one session and then a full session of another. The first one I watched was of Jan Beyer.

Jan is listed as the Manager of AFOL Network Events (such as Brickworld). I unfortunately missed his talk, but I caught the end of the Q&A session.

Question one was related to regional releases and why items can’t be purchased everywhere. The response was that sometimes LEGO can’t get the product license everywhere and sometimes retailers in some locations don’t want those products. He did mention that LEGO was working to get rid of regional exclusives as we have seen recently with the Chinese New Year sets.

Question two was related to regional exclusivity and the LEGO® House sets. Why could they only be released in Denmark, the UK and Ireland? The answer was with the packaging. It was not built for worldwide releases as the plan was to only sell them at the LEGO® House in Denmark. I own all three sets and could not tell you what is different on the packaging, but there you have it. Jan mentioned LEGO is looking to correct this in the future.

The next talk I saw was called “My Life in LEGO® Bricks” and was given by Sam Johnson. If you’re not familiar with Sam, he’s currently a designer on the Ideas team and has worked on City, Jurassic Park,

Legends of Chima, Nexo Knights, and Harry Potter. The picture is a few years old as it is from when the Dr. Who set came out in 2015, but it’s the same person.

His talk was about how LEGO goes from concept to actual sets. He used NEXO Knights and described how it was created, showed some concept art, explained the processes used, showed some initial models, and then showed some of the prototypes that eventually became one of the final models. I found the talk pretty interesting as it was cool to see how they go from idea to a final model.

There were a bunch of questions about Q&A. I asked if they were seeing any design delays due to having to work at home. He said he didn’t think so as they are used to connecting through digital means and future sets seem to be on track. He also mentioned that designers who like to build with physical bricks versus the digital design programs they have can go into HQ to get the bricks they need to build at home. Not a bad deal if you ask me.

Two others that stuck out to me:
-He said something to the effect of the LEGO Ideas Playable LEGO Piano is coming soon and it is awesome.
-While he was not involved with the Bricklink AFOL Designer Program he said it was a great program and LEGO did not see it as a competitor to the LEGO Ideas platform. I see that as good news. We can hope it picks up again someday.

6. Interact with LEGO Masters contestants

I checked into this room to see it quite busy. At the time there were around 45 people. The hosts were from a Bricks and Minifigs store. Contestants that I saw at the time were Boone, Jessie, and Emmanuel. At the time I checked in a number of younger viewers were asking questions to the contestants. There was a decent line in the chat to ask questions and I didn’t have a burning question so I left, but I was glad to see them taking the time to encourage younger fans.

7. Talk to vendors about their LEGO based products and maybe score some deals

I didn’t sign up to attend with the hopes of buying things so I didn’t visit any of the vendors present, but there were quite a few listed who were selling their items. Had I been looking for something, it definitely would have been a good opportunity to hit up some vendors.

In addition to the vendors, Brickworld was selling its own swag. I bought the convention printed 1x8 brick for $3.50 (including shipping). I’ll add a picture of it to this post once I get it. They also had some shirts for sale which looked pretty cool, but I did not buy.

8. Show off your own MOCs to the Beyond the Brick hosts

Joshua & John Hanlon from the YouTube.com channel Beyond Beyond the Brick led a session called “You Show Us!” This was your opportunity to present what you were working on to the hosts. Both times I checked in, it was just Joshua. He was building one of the BrickLink AFOL Designer Program sets while talking with people. The first time I checked in, someone was showing him pictures of some original Star Wars helmets he had built. The second time, a younger builder was doing his best to show a build he was working on.

I put a few questions into the chat window for Joshua (lesson learned… I put “Josh” in the chat… sorry!) and he got to them when he was done chatting with the kid in front of me. I asked if Beyond the Brick had any plans to change at all and if they plan to continue the live stream format they have been using during the COVID-19 period. The answers were they plan to stick with the format they have for now and they plan to continue with live streams.

9. GBC!!!!!!

If you have never seen a LEGO Great Ball Contraption (GBC) in action, you are missing out. There are some very talented builders out there who have figured out the mechanics to move balls through various features and they are very creative. I found a few videos of parts of what I saw on YouTube here and here. My kiddos and I watched the GBC for a bit and we saw it with the room lights on and then when the lights were off and it was lit by glow in the dark balls and LED lights. It was very cool!

10. Play interactive an interactive robotic game online.

I’m aware that most LEGO Conventions have games you can play and while many of them are hard to do over the internet, the Super Robo Rally by Steve Hassenplug is not a problem. I am definitely not an expert with this game, but basically he has a game board with robots on it and users have to program brick built robots through a series of turns to win the game against competitors. Beyond that I won’t try to explain it because I would probably get it wrong. Definitely a fun opportunity if this is something you are into. Just be sure to sign up for one of the slots ahead of time.

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Bravo if you’ve made it this far… I realize the virtual experience doesn’t compare to meeting in person, but given the situation, I applaud the Brickworld team for executing the idea and moving out with it. They had a tech support room you could join with questions and many of the rooms had moderators or the exhibitor spoke up every now and then to explain how they wanted to run things.

Did you attend Brickworld Virtual in April or May 2020? What were your thoughts?

In the meantime, happy building!

LEGO Product Availability Update (in the US)

The Brick Fan posted a note on 14 May 2020 from the LEGO Company regarding stock levels in the US. It answers my question from my post on April 29 2020 about all of the sets out of stock/back ordered. Read the article for the full details, but the short answer is they have higher demand in the US due to people at home wanting to build and then the factory in Mexico having to shut down. Looks like LEGO is trying to adjust supply chains as the factories in Asia and Europe are not shut down. We’ll have to see what happens.

In the meantime, get to know someone in Europe who can hook you up with sets from here…

Happy building!

A Disappointing May 4th Sale from LEGO® in the USA

If you’ve been an AFOL for a while and if you’re a Star Wars™ fan, then you’ve probably been tracking the multi day sale surrounding Star Wars™ day. Typically the sale includes the release on a new UCS set or some other larger Star Wars™ themed set, a gift with purchase set related to the theme, Double VIP points, and discounted sets.

Being in Europe, I check in with with the US sales, but I have to wait until 6 AM my time so I can see the sales start on the east coast of the US. This year I logged in a little after 7 AM on 1 May to check out the sales and let me tell you, I was disappointed in what I saw.

So they had the new A-wing Starfighter™ (#75275-1) for sale and the gift with purchase is #40407-1: Death Star II Battle available for purchases over $75. Additionally, there are a few other new sets available, but I won’t go into those now.

The big disappointment… there are no sale items. No sets are discounted at all. Zero. What!?!?! Why????

How can you call this a sale without anything at a discount?

To top this off, Amazon.com in the US has nine sets which are at least 20% off their retail pricing at the time of this post. Walmart.com has about the same at the time of the post too. Scoring sales in the US has to be done outside of Shop @ Home this weekend. Shop @ Home is only if you want some of the larger sets or the gift with purchase set.

Want to feel worse? Well the sale is on in Europe. Checking out the Lego.de site (Germany’s Shop @ Home page), there are a few deals posted.

#75253-1: LEGO Star Wars™ Boost Droid - 20% off - 159,99€ (~$177)
All of the Action Battle sets are 20% off
#75242-1 and #75250-1 were sold out, but they were both 20% off as well.

Not the greatest list of deals, but at least they had a few items to pick from.

Then onto Smyths Toys in Germany… you can see my post about Smyths here. Here are the sales they list for Star Wars™ sets:
-#75257-1: Millennium Falcon - 144,99€ (15€ off or ~$160 which still works out to the US retail price)
-#75256-1: Kylo Ren’s Shuttle - 96,99€ (23€ off or ~$107 in the US vs. a $129.99 retail price)
-All 3 new helmet sets for 49,99€ (10€ off or ~$55 vs. a $59.99 retail price in the US)
-75255-1: Yoda - 84,99€ (15€ off or ~$94 vs a $99.99 retail price in the US)
-#75253-1: LEGO Star Wars™ Boost Droid - 130,90€ (~69€ off or ~$145 vs a $199.99 retail price in the US)

There are a few more sets available for sale as well, but I won’t list them. Looks like Smyths might be a good place to hit the Star Wars™ sales in Germany.

So why is this? Has LEGO reduced their Star Wars™ inventory so they don’t need to run sales as often? Has competition in the US been removed and the big retailers just fall in line with LEGO to rake in profits? Are we seeing a COVID-19 impact? Are sales so good in the US that LEGO doesn’t need to discount? I’d appreciate hearing some insight from LEGO on the reasoning behind the sale and pricing.

Does anyone have any insight they can share here?

Any different views on this? Is it really a great sale and I’m just missing it?

LEGO Brick Based Home School (for Kindergarten-ish)

While many people are dealing with the challenge of home schooling during the pandemic, it’s somewhat of business as normal in my home. My non-Lego Spouse (NLS) started home schooling my oldest kiddo (now age 6) back in September for Kindergarten. We go to a local school for specials (art, gym, and music), but the rest happens here in our home. My NLS has done some amazing work adapting to my kiddo and how she learns and it seems to be going well. I was initially worried I would come home from work and both would be in tears, but so far so good. The biggest challenge the pandemic has brought is no access to libraries to get books. We rely on libraries for material to use and not having it has forced my NLS to find reading materials online.

Last week was supposed to be the spring break for the local school kids and my NLS decided to have home school spirit week to spice things up since we were still in session. We took a trip to Vienna right before the pandemic kicked in and borders closed so that was our spring break. My NLS had pajama day, dress up fancy day, inside-out and backwards day, and a few other fun ones. Anyways I was challenged to host a day of my own and there’s no better way to teach than with my favorite plastic bricks! Here’s what I used as a lesson plan. Feel free to steal any of the material you want if you have a kiddo around the age of mine learning some of the same material.

Definitely post some of your own ideas in the comments or you can email them to me at store@bricksforbricks.com. Thanks!

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DECORATIONS

I would have loved to have a huge scene of bricks covering everything, but I didn’t have a ton of time the night before to decorate. I took a few large bags from the brand store and then set up some sets around the school area as my decorations. As the teacher, I wore a brick themed outfit and proudly sported my Brickset t-shirt.

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CHARACTER QUALITY

Each week starts with a different character quality and it gets discussed every day at the start of the school day. Sometimes there are books related to the quality or video clips. Other times it is just a discussion about how someone we know has shown one of those traits. My NLS uses the wall (shown below) to display the one for the week and keeps the previous ones up nearby.

I decided to use a video from the LEGO® Company titled “The LEGO® Story.” It’s a clip from 2012 that discusses the history of the company through the present day. It’s about 15 minutes long and I stopped it every 5 minutes or so to review what we saw and to relate some of the character qualities we observed. Resiliency came up as the company was able to survive two factory fires and continue to flourish despite losing everything twice. You could argue that the company made the founders sound pretty amazing in terms of how they did everything, but in the end I think it got the point across.

One quick note… around the 10:10 mark, one of the characters says a word that depending on how you’re raising your kid could shock them. You might want to preview it first just in case you are concerned. I don’t know if my kiddo knows that word and I didn’t want to find out just yet so I skipped over that part.

MATH

Next up was Math. We’re learning subtraction. I didn’t do so well preparing for this lesson, but the goal was to use bricks to help solve the problems. I built bricks in two layers and the goal was to figure out how many studs were showing on the bottom layer and then subtract the number showing on the top layer. If it was too challenging, she could just count the studs remaining that could be seen.

I failed in that my kiddo knew a bunch and didn’t need the bricks for some of the problems. Also I messed up on a few of the brick examples that I made (Dad can’t count).

On the plus side, having a 1x8 and a 1x6 brick made determining the bottom was 14 much easier so that part helped. It also helped to have the top made of smaller bricks (1x1 and 1x2) to help add them up quickly.

I probably should have tweaked it a little bit, but in the end, she got all of them right and my NLS didn’t give me any dirty looks while I was “teaching.”

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Brain Break #1

My NLS has found that breaking up activities and moving around has definitely helped to get through the day versus powering through lessons. So I had to find fun things to do with bricks that would involve moving around and breaking up the lessons. Easy!

Brain Break #1 was a 2 minute build challenge and I was the challenger. The game was to see who can build the tallest tower that doesn’t fall down before the timer goes off.

I thought she would just start stacking, but she took her time selecting pieces and putting them on. After 2 minutes I was the winner. After 3 minutes, my 2-year old knocked my tower over and my 6-year old realized she could find bricks already stacked in the pile to get the tower much taller. I think if we were to repeat the challenge, it would be much different. Definitely a good break though.

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Handwriting

We tackled handwriting next. I fully admit this is not my strong point as my writing is atrocious. Here’s what we did. My NLS read in a book that younger kiddos have trouble writing a lot and can tire from it easily. So sometimes we will have my kiddo tell us a story. My NLS will write it out and then my kiddo will pick a line or two to write out versus writing the full thing.

To connect this activity to the brick, I built a small scene on my brick table using #80105-1: Chinese New Year Temple Fair and #60234-1: People Pack - Fun Fair (pictured below). Then I made up a story as if I was one of the minifigures at the fair. My kiddo caught on quick and she picked a minifigure to be. She recited about eight sentences or so that I scribbled down. Then she picked a line and my wife wrote it out nicely (so she could actually read it). From there, my kiddo wrote it out on her lined paper and used much neater handwriting than I will ever have.

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BRAIN BREAK #2

After some writing, we needed another break to shake things up again. My second game involved a cup full of minifigures. There were about 14 or so and I arranged them in different positions with their legs, arms, and heads all in different directions. I titled the game “Be a Minifigure” and started the game off with a discussion about what is different between minifigures and real people (no knees, no ankles, no moving elbows, etc.). From there we reached into the cup, pulled out minifigures, and did out best to copy their positions. My NLS took some pictures which I won’t put up because I look too goofy, but it was a lot of fun and there were a lot of laughs. I will include a few pictures of the minifigures we tried to replicate below for your enjoyment. You can try and match the position at home. We tried to do them all standing up, but for some you just had to lay down to match the position.

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HISTORY AND SCIENCE

Our last lesson of the day was history. My NLS has been going through early history with my kiddo this year and about the time of my lesson they were working on ancient Rome. I decided to do an architecture lesson. I found some pictures online of ancient Roman structures which included arches. She had done some talking about aqueducts before so we talked about how arches are stronger and how they are built with a keystone. I also showed some pictures of bridges without arches that were flat with lots of supports. I explained the difference between the two and how one needed a lot of supports and probably didn’t hold as much while the other held more (or at least the ones I showed did… I didn’t show modern bridges made of steel beams).

Anyways to demonstrate, I built some simple bridges out of 2x4 bricks. I tried to build them like the flat bridge with the supports and then a bridge with arches. It wasn’t 100% accurate, but it showed the concept. From there I used some dumb bells to demonstrate the strength (okay so they did this on LEGO Masters US too, but what we did was slightly different). The arch-like bridge was stronger than the straight bridge with the supports. The collapsing was enjoyed too.

We did a quick lesson on how to make the flat bridge stronger to include adding supports and attaching plates to the existing structure to make it stronger.

Overall it was a good lesson and she enjoyed it. A few pictures of our activity are below.

Adding weight to the flat bridge

Flat bridge destroyed

Arches still holding up to weight.

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WRAP UP

In total we spent maybe two to two and a half hours in total for everything. It was a good shake up from the normal lessons and I think my NLS was glad to have a break. As I said, feel free to use any of this material or modify it for your lessons at home.

Happy teaching and building!

The LEGO Company Steps into the COVID-19 Fight

I first saw it on the Brick Fan web site, but it appeared first on LEGO’s Facebook page. LEGO is using some of it’s equipment to build protective visors for medical teams. The video is on the Facebook page as well as on the Brick Fan site here. It’s even made some of the mainstream media like in the USA Today here. While there’s been a lot of different companies stepping up to help during the pandemic, it’s great to see one of my favorite brands get into the action. Thank you LEGO!

No bricks in these containers!