It’s no secret that I love LEGO programs. They can be a fantastic way to promote problem solving, spatial awareness, team work, and engineering skills and awareness, foster creativity, and encourage unstructured imaginative play. And once you’ve invested in a core supply of LEGO, any ongoing costs are typically quite limited – perfect for program leaders on a budget!
But LEGO can also be used to great effect to encourage literacy skills and vocabulary development, as I discovered when working with small groups of English language learning children. Repetitive drills and vocabulary worksheets can have their place in a language learning curriculum, but there’s nothing quite like mixing learning and play with brightly coloured LEGO!
LEGO bricks can easily be used to reinforce basic vocabulary. Colours and numbers, comparing and contrasting, prepositions and adjectives and other basic concepts can all be explored together through playing with LEGO!
Here are a few example conversations I have had with my young LEGO participants:
Can you find a blue LEGO piece? What colour would you call this brick?
What colours did Liam use to make his LEGO car?
Let’s try making an airplane using only yellow pieces.
Can we count how many bricks are in your LEGO house?
Let’s try making a tower using only pieces with six studs – can we count how many studs this brick has?
Which tower is taller – Liam’s or Catherine’s?
Let’s put the airplane on top / behind / beside / inside the tower.
Should we put some windows on the left side of the house, or the right side? Should we make them large windows or small windows?
Practicing vocabulary can become a lot more fun when there’s building involved! This kind of learning through play can also feel much less intimidating for some children than sitting at a desk being drilled by an instructor, and more shy or anxious children might thrive in an environment where they can answer questions while keeping their hands busy and their eyes on their work, rather than on their teacher. Obviously this approach won’t necessarily work for all children – some might find the LEGO too much of a distraction to focus on any vocabulary practice – but even if the focus of your program isn’t specifically on language acquisition, you might want to consider adding in some of these kinds of conversations with your participants to add an extra level of learning.
Every moment can be a teachable moment when you’ve got literacy on the brain!