Lego and Maths- building to learn

23 January 2016January 23, 2016Mark

Lego and Maths

A school in the UK has officially begun teaching a program called “MoreToMaths“, which has been developed directly by the Lego^® company’s education arm in Denmark and the US. Their slogan is “There’s more to maths than facts,” and their aim is use Lego^® bricks to enhance the learning process; make it more fun for children. In the UK their teaching kits for a class of 30, which include lesson plans, software and teaching guides, as well as bricks, cost £750, so they’re not cheap.

But you really don’t need to spend money like that to use Lego^® to learn maths- even an average child’s brick collection will probably be enough. From basics like counting the number of studs ( “knobs”) on a Lego piece to using the different lengths of bricks to learn simple addition, subtraction or multiplication:

It doesn’t even need to be bricks if you have a baseplate- children can still work out the sizes of different pieces by placing the part on the baseplate and counting the studs up and across. With the studs it’s easy to begin to see and comprehend the relative sizes of numbers and how they can fit inside each other or beside each other to create larger numbers. Once they have a sense of the size of parts they can apply these learnings to their own play, making faster and easier choices when putting sets or models together.

So if your child loves building with Lego^®, why not try getting them to learn while they do it? It’ll teach them maths skills as well as make them a better builder!

You can read more about the MoreToMaths program and the UK school’s use of it in The Guardian here.

Master Builder Tips and Tricks #1

9 January 2016January 9, 2016Mark

9th January 2016
MASTER BUILDER TIPS AND TRICKS
As part of the new year our master builder and Brick Party host Mark will be sharing some basic tips and tricks for building your own Lego^® models throughout 2016! Here’s his first post:

S.N.O.T. Building

S.N.O.T. stands for Studs Not On Top and is one of the easiest of the more advanced building techniques. Essentially it involves using either hinges or Lego parts that have studs going in more than one direction and lets you build more curved or angled shapes by attaching pieces sideways, upside down or on angles, like I did with the numbers in this Happy New Years picture:

There are S.N.O.T bricks, S.N.O.T plates and ‘brackets’, all of which can be used to put pieces together in new and interesting ways, but best of all, they’re all used in most official Lego^® sets, so almost any child will have at least of few of them in their parts collections! You can also buy these parts directly from Lego.com.au’s pick-a-brick service under the ‘brick, special” and ‘plate, special’ categories, or by searching the Bricklink site’s numerous stores.

Basic S.N.O.T means using a brick or plate that has studs on it’s side so you can then add more bricks sideways to either create a curve with sloped bricks or add control panel tiles for a spaceship. It also means you can stack a S.N.O.T brick onto ANOTHER S.N.O.T brick to get studs facing the bottom and build upside down! Now that’s super S.N.O.T-y!

More advanced uses of S.N.O.T take advantage of some simple brick maths – the fact that it takes 3 plates stacked to equal one brick high or that 2 studs are the same width as 5 plates laid sideways- you can see some that at work in the bottom of the “0” in 2016.

Hinges or plates with clips and bars ( used to create the diagonal angle of the ‘2’ below) allow you to put studs and parts at more angles than the S.N.O.T parts, but will normally require a bit of support from other parts so they keep their angle and don’t flop around, especially if you put a lot of parts, and therefore weight, on the angled end of the hinge connection.

So next time you’re building at home, why not try out some S.N.O.T to make your next creation stand out?

That’s about it for my first Master Builder tips and tricks post- I hope it helps you or your child get more out of your Lego^® collection and create more amazing things!

Sydney Brick Show Wrap Up

2 May 2015May 2, 2015Mark

After Mark walking nearly 60km over 3 days and talking to countless families and fans of Lego we think we can safely say that The Sydney Brick Show was a huge success!

Over the course of Saturday the children attending helped us construct an almost 3m tall Bandaged Bear, based on a design by Mark. It was especially amazing to see the smiles on the faces of the very sick kids from Bear Cottage who came in early on Sunday to help us finish the bear and get photos.
Despite a mishap with Lego Bumblebee on Sunday morning the mighty Transformer was back on his feet within an hour!

If you went to the show we hope you had a great time. Mark will be displaying his creations at the next BrickExpo show in Canberra as well as at David Jones Sydney in September this year.

Sydney Brick Show

12 April 2015April 12, 2015MarkLeave a comment

Mark will be showcasing some of his creations and helping run the 4th Annual Sydney Brick Show next weekend on the 18th-19th April at the Sydney town Hall! The Show is Not-for-Profit and last year donated $25,000 to support sick children at Bear Cottage.
This year the show is sure to be even bigger and better with twice as much room across 2 floors, a world-first opportunity to play the new Lego^® Jurassic Park game and a chance to help us build an enormous 2m high Bandaged Bear!
They’re also giving you the chance win a Lego^® Mini Cooper set- and all you have to do is either post a photo of a lego figure doing something to the Sydney Brick Show Facebook page or Instagram using the hashtag #sydneybrickshow by 12pm on Friday 17th April