Lego: The Ultimate Teaching Toy

Lego.

We love it and hate it, right?

It's a fantastic tool to have at home for play and learning but when it gets underfoot, OUCH!

Lego is something I highly recommend you have in your homeschool collection and your classroom.

It's an excellent tool for fostering fine motor skills necessary for writing later on as it often employs the ever-famous pincer grasp to place pieces and affix them together or pull them apart.

It's also an excellent tool for developing mathematical thinking and concepts.

Here are just THREE of many incredible mathematical applications for Lego that I love.

1. Fractions

I love fractions. Most people hate them and the reason most people hate them is because they were never taught about them in a way that makes sense. In fact, a poor understanding of fractions is the biggest factor why children don't succeed in upper-level mathematics applications. Without a fluency in the abstract understandings of fractions, things like slope of a line in linear relations, radical/rational expressions, trigonomic ratios (sine, cosine, tangent) and even conversions for measurement and units in chemistry and physics will simply be overwhelming. So how can we play with fractions? Legos!

The pieces all represent fractional parts of each other. Use the language of fractions when you're building and playing, too!

Top: one fourth (1/4 or 2/8)

Second: one third (1/3 or 2/6)

Third: one half (1/2 or 2/4)

Bottom: one fourth (1/4)

There are so many other fractions you can build and create, these are just some simple basics.

2. Area and Perimeter

Area and Perimeter are typically very concrete mathematical applications in that they come with a formula to be memorized. But, we know that memorizing math has never been equated to overall success. We have to really understand where these formulas are derived in order to successfully apply this knowledge and use it in complex problem solving scenarios.

In short, perimeter is distance around an object or shape. We learn that we need to add up all the sides, but what we don't always account for is that it is a simple counting or adding of single units all the way around the rim of a particular shape. These Legos give a concrete visual of this counting process seen with the 'ones' blocks creating the outer rim of the rectangle.

Area, we are taught, is a multiplication of length and width. This is true only for regular four sided polygons... any other shape we have to apply a different memorized formula. However, when we understand that area is also the number of square units within a shape, our understanding deepens. The reason why area is always recorded as units squared is because area is the creation of squares inside of the shape. Using Legos again builds the concrete conceptualization of this highly memorized process which then allows students to aptly apply it when they encounter irregular polygons and anything outside of the basic rectangular shape.

3. Building Spatial Sense

I have another article on why spatial sense is critical for mathematical success that you can read here: Spatial Skills

In short, allowing your child open-ended play with these Lego blocks helps them strengthen their spatial awareness. Does this piece fit here? Is it too big? Does it go this way? If I stack this here, is it stable? These are some of the thoughts that go into open-ended Lego play.

Happy building everyone!

-Ashley

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