Legos

I finally get Legos.  They always confused me.  Why would you want a set with such specific pieces?  How can you even find them all again to make the same thing?  Aren’t you just supposed to use your imagination and come up with your own creations?  Well, kind of…

What I finally realized about these sets is that they’re like a puzzle.  The boys must use their spatial reasoning, counting skills, sequencing and a lot of patience and determination to follow the manuals and put them together correctly.  One Lego off by one notch and it won’t quite work. 

Patrick was awesome at it.  He finished a 7-14 year old set over two half-hour sessions.  He could find the pieces he needed among the big pile from just looking at the pictures, and he almost always got their placement correct.  I was really stunned. 

Luke was about as good as I expected a newly-five-year-old to be.  His set was smaller, had fewer steps and took less time, but it was just as difficult.  It took him longer to see that the directions were so exact and that it was important to follow them exactly to get the desired effect.  His second project was much better… maybe he just needed the practice.

I had to watch both of the boys and help with the actual snapping into place of some of the smaller pieces.  Their fingers just don’t quite have the ability.  They’re just learning to write letters, remember.  I also learned that this was a *one kid at a time* project.  When we first opened the box with its hundreds of little pieces, six hands were flying and grabbing, stuff was falling on the floor to get lost in the carpet, it was bad news.  I had to be mean mom to keep everyone away but one.

I can’t explain why, but I just feel like this is another big step for our boys.  Is that crazy?  They’re just toys… but, they’re big kid toys.