What? History can be fun and interactive?
Well... yeah. What made you think it was boring and just for reading about in the first place?
My Kindergartener suddenly became interested in ninja's this year and I felt like the cartoons she was watching about ninja's weren't doing them justice so I decided to take it into my own hands and teach her what ninja's were really all about. See, the ninja's of history weren't do-gooders and hero's like the cartoons make them out to be, they were highly trained assassins. After learning the truth about ninja's she wasn't to be deterred in her interest and love of them (which is ok), so I decided we should use our collection of Lego's to make an oriental village, with a ninja training center (cartoon based of course). She inherited all of my Lego collection from when I was a kid and then started getting Lego's of her own to add to it, so we had a lot of Lego's to work with.
An oriental fishing hut built over the water. She has a desk in her closet dedicated to Lego's, so I went ahead and covered it with blue paper for water temporarily, and then taped the base plates down on top of that.
The fishing hut again and oriental style gate. (Please don't give me comments about how 'inaccurate' all of this is to real life. The point wasn't to make it 100% accurate, it was to get her involved in the history we were learning and give her something to play with to act out history and have fun with it.
A pier leading out into the bay.
A bridge leading over a river to the 'ninja' training center.
A pond of serenity.
The gate leading into the tower on the other side of the bay.
The ninja assassin climbing up to kill the enemy (in this case a scary looking skeleton). The skeleton was inspired by the Lego Ninjago show that got her interested in Ninja's in the first place.
Questions? Comments? Do you use Lego's as a teaching tool for history as part of your home school curriculum? Do you use Lego's as a teaching tool for other things? Let us know in a comment below, we want to hear from you!
Also, don't forget to check out our Home school board on Pinterest, and our Lego ideas board on Pinterest!
I love it! I would not have thought of it as inaccurate given her grade level. good idea!
ReplyDeleteWow what a great little scene you made! My boys (9 and 11) love Legos and are always asking for more on birthdays and Christmas. I hadn't thought of using Legos for school before but I'll have to start thinking up some good history applications for this. They'll love the challenge of building a scene straight out of history.
ReplyDeleteI know some parents who also have their children build scenes from the Bible and they have a lot of fun with that. Legos could also be used to build science scenes (like an archeologist unearthing a dinosaur), or to get kids interested in architecture.
DeleteI'm so excited to start integrating Legos into our school. There have been so many great ideas popping up on the internet over the last couple of years.
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