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.