LEGO Week

After taking a week off from themes, we spent a week playing with Legos in just about every way imaginable. First, to give credit where it is due... I got most of my ideas from here, here, and other places that unfortunately I lost track of, but Google and Pinterest are my friends. Big time. Oh, and this looks awesome for older kids... we'll have to do it in the future!

On Monday, I printed some activity sheets with challenges, like building the tallest thing and the shortest thing with a set number of pieces, so there was counting, sorting, building, patterning, letter and number making...

 We made dresses for the Lego Friends using fabric scraps and fabric markers.

We made boats out of Legos and tested their ability to stay afloat in the pool.

Another challenge I gave Ellie was to create something using only one color. She chose purple of course.

We also played Roll-a-figure from this packet, which was fun, and the girls spent a lot of time playing with their figures afterward. We also made sure to watch the Lego Friends show (Katie calls it "Me and the Girls") on Netflix so as to completely immerse ourselves in LEGO fun.

At this point, I should probably mention that I came down with a nasty cold all week... but I plugged on. Life doesn't stop for germs! I was, however, in a medicated, congested fog, so the order/coherence of events may not be 100%... And for that I'm sorry.

On Tuesday, we did the stuff I had planned for Wednesday because of my cold.
That included making the kids' names in Legos,

Coloring their own mini figures,

A Lego brick themed lunch,

Lots of free play while mommy blew her nose on the couch under a blanket,

 The construction of a cool candy dispenser (Anthony called it the Jelly Bean House),

And the construction of their new kits we got at the Lego Store a few weeks ago. Paul helped Anthony build his plane.

 Katie didn't help me build her giraffes.

That evening, everything was not awesome in my head, so we watched the LEGO Movie before bedtime because I was all out of steam.

On Wednesday, I was feeling a little better, and we did some measuring with Duplos.

The girls guessed how many bricks different household items measured, and then they tested their hypotheses.

 They worked together, counting and measuring.

Then I gave them cards on which I had traced the outlines of different Duplo structures, and they had to make them based on the outlines matching.

 More teamwork... they did them all!

Even though these were "baby" Legos, they did not complain, and they actually really liked the activity.

I had made a few simpler cards for Anthony to do, just matching the colors to make sticks. This was more his speed, though he didn't mind playing along with all the other activities either (or just parallel playing his own thing right next to us).

 After we made our pattern sticks, we used them as bowling pins.

 Ice balls were the balls, which made the activity last just long enough. Once they couldn't stand the cold or the ice balls cracked, it was lunch time, so getting them to switch activities was easy.

I made them a Lego man lunch with corn on the cob, meatballs, peppers, cheese, and bread. They always like lunches with character, but they do sometimes play more than they eat.

We then tried making shadow art. Ellie built a structure, then she traced the shadow of it on her paper as I held the flashlight... cool idea in theory, but she didn't care for it too much.

At naptime, we made a marble run. Katie really got into it and mastered it in no time.

And since we were playing with marbles, the girls decided they wanted to play marble works, which Anthony was happy to play after he got out of his bed.

 We continued with physics by making balloon-powered Lego cars.

Then they wanted to just play with their balloons...

On Thursday, we ran some non-Lego-related errands and didn't get to our activities until the end of the day... but we made some cool stop-motion movies with the Lego Movie Maker app.

Katie's:

Ellie's:

Then for dessert, we decorated Lego cookies with icing and M&Ms.

And we ended the day playing a board game that didn't quite hold the attention of the little ones, but Ellie LOVED and wanted to play over and over again.

On Friday, we didn't do anything Lego-related because we were in the car for a lot of time, traveling to Dallas to visit my parents, but on Saturday we made up for the lack of Legos by going to Legoland Discovery Center in Grapevine... They had a blast; I'll let the pictures do the talking.

We spoiled them and bought them some new sets at the play place, which they built (or rather, Paul and I built for them).

 And everything was awesome! Yay Lego week!