We had over 60 kids show up to our first session. It was standing room only! As the crowd grew bigger, we sprang into action. We decide there wasn't enough bricks or room for everyone to have their own space and enough bricks for their own creation. We had 6 tables and told everyone that they had to work as a team on the challenge (which was vehicles). This presented some problems but also some wonderful creations and a great time for kids to engage in teamwork!
Pros and Woes
1) Parents: We opened the program to all ages so we wouldn't exclude any younger children who enjoyed playing with LEGO at home with their older siblings. So we had parents stay in the room and observe, but some wanted to help out. One in particular wanted to help out a lot. When we informed the room that each table could not vote for their own creation, one mother interrupted me asking if the parents could vote for their kids. On the spot, we said no.
2)Little Kids- We had explained to patrons before that this was a collaborative building program, not a "knocking-over-towers" program. While we wanted it to appeal to older kids, we certainly didn't want younger kids who played with LEGO to be left out. Who wants to tell a five year old no, he can't be in a program all about his/her favorite toy? Some parents expressed concern that their wasn't a table just for little kids because older ones ("boys") were being pushing or overbearing. Most of these kids were able to find some bricks to make their own stuff, but we did stick to our rules of one creation per table. Also I found it a bit unfair to force kids to work with the same age group or sex. Sometimes issues like this are the parents' decisions. They can decide whether their kid is ready to work together or needs their own space. Thankfully all the kids there knew what LEGO was and we weren't plagued with toddlers sticking them in their mouths!
3)Voting- We were kind of running this by the seat of our pants for this first session. We did voting by a show of hands which didn't work so well. Kids voted more than once, complained they wanted to change their vote and worst of all, kids got to see that no one else was voting for their creations.
We ended our first program with stunning collaborative creations!
I was also put on the spot and asked which one I thought was the best. I said I wasn't voting because all of them were 10 times better than anything I could have made!
LEGO CLUB V 2.0!
Space- We moved it upstairs in our storytime area to allow for more space! It involved a little extra leg work to put up the tables, but it's worth it to not have kids packed like sardines! We were also extra vigilant in our clean up ("There are over 200 hands in this room right now! We can all clean up a little bit!") as reminding everyone that babies share this space too and we don't want little piece around that could make it unsafe.
Teamwork- We still wanted to encourage working together since it had such great results last time. We did make space at our puzzle table as a "Free Play" table for little ones or anyone who didn't want to work as a group. However this table didn't get to enter for voting. Everyone did get their creation photographed and put up on our Facebook page to show them we were proud of everything that they made.
Voting- I thought about not letting the group of kids who won be able to eligible to win again, but that seemed to be a more complicated issues. I don't think we wanted the kids to feel like this was a competition, but to enjoy the experience. Also I had to find another way to make the voting process more smooth and anonymous.
We had 6 tables for building and each table had a number and a color for their "team". I created little squares of paper with the numbers and corresponding colors. (1-Red, 2- Green etc.) After cutting them out I paper clipped them together in stacks of 5- leaving out one color. So all the bundles that I would pass out to the kids at the 1-Red table, did not have a red piece of paper in it so they couldn't vote for themselves! We also asked the kids to vote for their favorite two creations. When the little slips of paper where put in the box I passed around to each table, they could put two in. Color coordinating them made it easy for me to eye ball and count when I dumped them out. We also did not announce who was second and who was first. I did have parents who helped and offered advice, but didn't insist on taking control or wanted to vote.
Here is a look at our Version 2.0 We had over 100 people show up versus 60 last time!
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| So many kids we can't fit them all in one picture! |
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| This week winners! |
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