The Return of LEGO Club: Unleash the Choas

133 people showed up for the first LEGO club this summer. I had seven tables, at least 5,000 LEGO bricks and it was still madness.

I was expecting this, just maybe not on this scale. We had issues with kids not sharing, ignoring safety rules and several who had never played with LEGO at all and keep pulling on my tailcoats asking me to show them how to build something.

The kicker was a had a notoriously obnoxious patron show up half way through, remark loudly on the chaos and then had this "helpful" suggestions.

"Next time I come, I will help you organized the kids into groups of the same age and gender. That way it will work smoother. Okay, honey"

 Ah my inner monologue at that point.

"These children are working together to make beautiful creations. Why do they need to be separate by gender? Is there a law that boys and girls can't play together? Did I miss something?! Ages. Sure put all the older kids together! They would win every time because they have more experience and practice. Then you'll be back whining to me at how that's not fair to the little kids. Let the kids be! They are playing fine without your interference. I've been doing this for over a year. This ain't my first trip to the rodeo. Get out of my face, please. And don't call me honey, you're only 5 years older than me!"

(Imagining Lewis Black narrating that is quite satisfying)

Instead I apologized for the chaos and explained that we had an option of a free play table for kids of any ages to use if they don't want to team build.

Thankfully that patron never showed back up at LEGO club for the rest of the summer and things got a lot more calmer. Sure I had a panic attack afterwards and lived in fear that every club meeting this summer would be like the first, but they were not. (thank god)

We had four meetings of LEGO club this year and I divided the challenges into two categories. Creative Challenges and Technical Challenges

Creative Challenges had the kids build something to a specific theme while Technical let them build what ever they wanted but it had to fit a certain criteria

Creative Challenges
Favorite Books-  I selected about 20 well known books and gave each team a envelope with 5 titles that they could chose from. Each team could only pick one book and could build a scene, character or other representation from the story.

Our Winner- The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Superhero HQ- In going with our theme "Every Hero Has a Story" I asked the kids to build a superhero headquarter. They had to think about what the superheroes would use for communication, transportation and other technology. They also had to determine where it was located (A cave, underground, sky scraper or outer space.)

Impressive!

Technical Challenges
Unbreakable- This was a favorite for me. The kids can build what ever they want, but it can't break. I would go over and shake the tables, or tilt the creation and drop them. Any brick or figure that fell off, couldn't be put back on.

This one was call Vietnam Bomb Base. Historical!

Bricks Only- Again another favorite for me. Too often I had seen kids obsessed with sticking on the most mini figures, doo-dads and other assorted pieces instead of actually building something! It's seems to be the idea that the biggest and busiest creations will automatically be the winner. Not so! My experience has been the team with the best team work and clear vision always has the most votes.
For this challenge kids could build what ever they wanted, but there was to be no wheels, mini figures, clamps, food or other accessories allowed.

Again not my first time at the rodeo. For more tips about running a LEGO club and containing the creative chaos it brings, look here at this post.

LEGO Club : V 1.0 and V 2.0

We embarked on a great experiment this summer at the library; Starting a LEGO Club. Purchased our bricks, made vague outline of what we were doing, reserved the meeting room and decided to go with the flow....

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!

When we took them apart afterwards , we were amazed at how much thought and detail we saw! We counted this program as a stumbling success and looked forward to improving it for the next meeting

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!

So many kids we can't fit them all in one picture!

This week winners!