O/T How LEGO supports Child Development

[clet10]

Here are my top three reasons why LEGO toys should be in your child’s toy collection:

1. Promotes Fine Motor Skills
LEGO bricks come in a vast range of shapes and sizes, which smaller hands need learn how to assemble and take apart. These small twists and turns of their hands, fingers, and arms promote coordination and dexterity which children need for handwriting, crafts, and independent dressing.
Through their manipulation of LEGO bricks, children learn about applying differential pressure; some bricks need small amounts of pressure when building, whilst others require a great deal. The benefits of this hands-on trial and error learning are far more valuable than anything we can say as parents to teach our children about applying the right amount of pencil pressure as they write.

2. Develops Creativity
Play is a child’s work and their way of trying out new skills, whilst perfecting others. Providing a box of random pieces of LEGO and unstructured time is essential to ignite their imagination and develop their creativity. These different sized pieces of LEGO are so exciting because they can become a pirate ship, a space rocket, a magical kingdom or the entrance to another world.
Through imaginative play, children lose themselves in their fantasies. An anxious child loses all inhibitions when they are slaying dragons, teaching their pupils, caring for poorly animals, or saving the universe with their super powers.

3. Provides an opportunity to try new skills without fear of failure
When children play they are constantly learning new skills, which can then be generalised to other areas of their life. Playing with LEGO provides an understanding of spatial awareness, promotes a sense of creativity, and teaches mathematical concepts of symmetry, shape and geometry.
Children learn so much more through LEGO play because there is no fear of failure, LEGO creations fall down when you stack them too high, not all our creations quite work out as we planned, but we can always start again.

[Shrimp Girl]

Looking forward to the MFC Lego playset with its highly collectible Kevin Ellison minifigure...

[Zippy]

Nothing for child development quite like LEGO ver 1

[Westgate Wanderer]

A very constructive post!

[LFC Shrimper]

Very good investment also

[Keith]

A first time post from clet10. As they are new here, I added the 'O/T' for them, but thought it perhaps should be 'WTF'? Not sure what the point of SPAM is if they forget to add a link?