Conclusion
Construction sets are an excellent educational toy for children of different ages. Modern kits provide a wide range of ways to play: from creating a simple model according to a diagram to designing and creating radio-controlled robots with your own hands. Classes with construction toys develop spatial and logical thinking, voluntary attention, speech and communication abilities of children, teach them to plan their activities and control the process of completing tasks, and develop their personal qualities. Different ways of organizing children's play involve different areas of their development, and the use of construction sets as educational material makes playing with construction sets an element of learning to read and count.
The process of playing the constructor
It should be noted that any designer is first and foremost a tool. And like any tool, it can be used in different ways. If we analyze the ways of playing Lego, we can highlight the following:
- The child independently constructs a model according to the proposed scheme,
- The child embodies his own ideas for models,
- Several children independently construct models and participate in a common game,
- A child or group of children constructs models with the participation of parents or teachers.
All these processes, although outwardly similar, will literally be different activities for the child, since in some conditions he will more actively develop creative thinking, in others the emphasis will be on the development of communication skills, and in some games, logical thinking will be primarily developed.
The benefits of playing with construction kits for a child’s development largely depend on how the process of this game is organized. By changing the conditions and rules of the game, we can gently guide the child’s development in the right direction: a constructor can instill perseverance and accuracy in a noisy fidget, while a shy child can find an excellent reason to communicate with peers.
Alternative opinion
There are teachers who criticize various aspects of playing with Lego: strict geometric shapes, limited expression of imagination when playing with modern sets, the formation of simplified ideas about objects. Let's figure out whether there is a real danger in playing with construction sets.
Speaking about simplification, it should be noted that you need to choose a construction set and the rules of playing with it in accordance with the age of the child. Any toy will contribute to the development of a child only if the child does not succeed in everything the first time. Sometimes kids themselves try to create more and more complex models; sometimes a timely question asked by an adult can help. Children grow out of their toys, and this is a sign of their development, and Lego allows you to increase complexity by purchasing new sets or changing the goals of the game.
Speaking about limiting the possibilities for expressing imagination, it is necessary to mention that today the choice of designers is quite wide. Some kits are really more suited to building a specific pattern, while more general kits offer more scope for creativity, and mixing different kits can lead to very creative solutions. Paying attention to your child's needs allows you to choose the set that best suits your child.
Critics often mention the unrealistic shapes in Lego sets. Indeed, if a child plays only with Lego all his life, he may not recognize a cat in a living cat. Fortunately, in reality, a child encounters a huge number of images of varying detail, which, on the contrary, enriches the child’s understanding of the variety of objects and phenomena of this world.
The Lego constructor, used consciously by parents, has many advantages, and the disadvantages are often associated not with the set itself, but with the ways of its use and the inadequacy of the child’s age. A construction set cannot replace all of a child’s other toys, but its rational use has a positive impact on the baby’s development.
Unconventional ideas
The versatility of the construction set's elements allows it to go beyond the playing area. There are many non-standard ideas for using Lego for the development and organization of children's leisure time.
Lego household items
Armed with a search engine, you can find many ideas for creating night lights, key holders, bird feeders and pencil holders from Lego. Together with your child, you can create a gift project for relatives, make a glass for storing pencils according to your own design, or use your imagination to solve the current problem of organizing space at home.
Using a construction set for such purposes has a number of advantages: it is difficult to break, a child can easily correct any mistakes on his own, the item can be disassembled at any time, and the construction set itself does not get dirty and does not require special storage conditions.
Constructors in training
Recently, more and more teachers are using construction sets as visual material when teaching writing and reading, developing the child’s thinking, memory and attention. Addition and subtraction, multiplication and division are explained more easily when using blocks of different sizes. The letters printed on the blocks make learning to read a truly entertaining process. Working with the constructor, the child connects physical activity to the learning process, which makes this process much more effective and interesting. Here is one example of educational games made from Lego:
Creating new tasks is limited only by your imagination, and new ideas can always be gleaned from teachers and parents whose approaches you trust.
Construction sets can become not only an excellent toy, but also educational and creative material for preschoolers and primary schoolchildren. Varying ideas and elements creates almost unlimited possibilities for organizing educational activities for children.
