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!
