Let girls play Lego!

[LMD]

I read this article this morning and thought it was interesting! Always happy to find justification for the amount of money we've dropped on little plastic bricks... ?

Students who had played with certain video games - adventure games with complex maps, certain sports games, and simulation games like Minecraft, as well as those who had played with construction toys like Lego, tended to be good at spatial cognition. Even more interesting they found that there was no difference in spatial cognition between males and females - if both had played with these games or toys.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/spacex-launch-universal-music-the-love-protein-and-more-1.4526115/lego-and-video-games-stem-the-gender-divide-1.4526169

[Mommyof1]

My DD5 loves Legos.

We are currently at Lego Club at our library. They meet bimonthly all year long.

She also plays them with her Daddy who also loves them and is playing at Lego Club with her.

Me, I'm not into it.

There are a handful of girls at Lego Club but a lot more boys.

[carriede]

Good to know. I've never been great with spacial relationships, but my DD plays lego and Minecraft just as much as DS (any chance the get).

[Ravin]

I tried to get DD interested in Lego and other such toys, but they never caught and held her attention.

[hjffkj]

Legos are loved by all in this family, me included

[Loowit]

I played with my brother's when I was a kid, but alas I have poor spacial reasoning.  My kids all enjoy(ed) playing with Lego, and they all are much better as spacial reasoning than I am, but then so is their dad.  I always just figured my kids got it from him.

[Kassia]

My sons loved Legos and played with them all the time and that was usually their top picks for gifts.  Dd had plenty to play with because of her brothers and we bought her some *girl* sets but she was never interested.  She didn't like dolls either - she liked puzzles, music, and stuffed animals.  

ETA:  One of my sons had fine motor delays and I think his interest in Legos helped a lot.  Also, all three boys ended up being engineers - not sure if Legos had anything to do with that.  

 

[JIN MOUSA]

10 minutes ago, StellaM said:

The confusing thing with Lego, is that when I was growing up, it was just Lego. Boys and girls could play with it.

Now, they make special pink Lego for girls ?  That's bizarre. I think the stereotyping of toys has gotten worse, not better.

Lego agreed with you in 1974. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/equa-lego-ty/

My beef with Lego today is how many tiny, specialized pieces there are, and how it feels necessary to follow instructions to build something. They don't sell sets that are just bricks anymore. I'm looking at getting some lots off eBay that don't include the scads of mini randomness. 

 

edited for spelling

[LMD]

6 minutes ago, StellaM said:

The confusing thing with Lego, is that when I was growing up, it was just Lego. Boys and girls could play with it.

Now, they make special pink Lego for girls ?  That's bizarre. I think the stereotyping of toys has gotten worse, not better.

I can vouch for Lego time improving spatial ability. Ds was into it for about 5 years. at the start, I couldn't even work out how to mke something simple, by the end, iI rocked it ?

Yes the pink Lego annoys me too and it came out just as my daughter hit the tweens and the marketing was perfect. Much to my chagrin she loves those darn elves...

Of course, it all ends up in the giant Lego box eventually, and my youngest son loves all the pink/purple bricks. I guess it's a wash lol

[JIN MOUSA]

4 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

I HATE all the specialized little pieces they have now.  I don’t mind the colors like pink, lavender, translucent orange etc.  But a translucent orange pice shaped like hot wheels flames that fits over exactly a one unit brick, or pieces designed to be flower petals or speed boat steering wheels...they are too small and specialized. 

I think Legi classic sets are fine.  They do still sell them.  But I think the hyper specialization takes away from the benefits LEGO May have had. 

The annoying thing is that the classic creative boxes (we have a couple of these https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Classic-Large-Creative-Brick/dp/B00NHQF6MG) have SO many small, specialized pieces. It inflates the piece count, and the number of useful building bricks is a small percentage of the total pieces. 

[Ali in OR]

I grew up in a Lego-loving household. I love math, majored in industrial engineering, and taught high school math. I was so excited to get my kids into legos that I bought complicated sets when the older was 6 (starting with a house set and then a castle because I've always liked buildings best). I built them their sets for the first few Christmases but they kind of kicked me out of the process with some of the Harry Potter sets when they were finally ready for complex builds.

That said, I consider my spatial thinking skills to be on the weak side compared to other math skills. It's just harder for me to visualize things from drawings. I think it's an important skill, and in math I work hard at understanding graphs and transformations and translations, but I have to say it isn't really natural for me. Like I can't easily visualize the inverse of a function--like flipping a graph of a line over the line y=x. I might have to plot a few points to know I've got it right. I have one dd who is very visual and I think it probably is more natural for her than it is for me. So I'm very pro-Lego and think it builds great skills, but I'm not convinced that just doing the right activities can make anyone great at this particular ability. But maybe it can make them better than they would have been otherwise!

[Crimson Wife]

Correlation =/= causation

My kids showed a preference VERY early on (as in by age 1) for building oriented toys & activities vs. language oriented toys & activities. I didn't push one over the other- this is just natural interest. And I think because they spent so much time in one as opposed to the other, it has developed that sort of reasoning skills. The boy is a Lego lover but so is his little sister. This week at summer school her class was building suspension bridges with gumdrops & toothpicks and apparently she absolutely LOVED the activity.

[AimeeM]

We only have one girl (DD16) and she had zero interest in legos. Never asked as a younger child. Occasionally she will indulge her younger brothers (9 and 6) by building with them, but that's about it. Now, she was thoroughly obsessed with Minecraft for a couple years. All of the kids have shared that obsession, lol.

[historically accurate]

Two of my girls like LEGO sometimes; one girl never liked LEGO. None of my kids liked Minecraft. Even with that, they all are pretty good at spatial relations. Way better than me, definitely not my specialty.

I remember helping my friend study for the dentistry school exam; it was all spatial relations. I realized then that I would not make a good dentist (even if I could get past the whole hands in someone's mouth all day thing LOL).

[marbel]

We had a billion Legos.  My son loved them. My daughter didn't. We would have been happy for her to play with them, but she never enjoyed it. I don't get "let girls play Lego."  Do people discourage it?  

[LucyStoner]

5 hours ago, LMD said:

Yes the pink Lego annoys me too and it came out just as my daughter hit the tweens and the marketing was perfect. Much to my chagrin she loves those darn elves...

Of course, it all ends up in the giant Lego box eventually, and my youngest son loves all the pink/purple bricks. I guess it's a wash lol

Don’t even get me started on Lego friends.  

This cartoon says it all for me:

https://rebeccahains.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/2014-12-06-lego-friends.jpg

[LucyStoner]

We do have some sets from the friends line.  My son wanted the treehouse and I think his cousin gave him a pet themed set.  

We don’t keep any of the sets together but they do enjoy building them.  The instructions teach some building techniques and design tricks.  

They have been saving for a Death Star for a long time so I imagine that might stay together for at least a bit.  

[Arcadia]

2 hours ago, marbel said:

I don't get "let girls play Lego."  Do people discourage it?  

 

My former neighbor’s daughter (DS13’s former classmate) didn’t ask for Legos until she was playing Legos at my home. Her mom thought it was a passing fancy and didn’t get her any until she was playing with her younger brother’s Lego birthday presents whenever her brother was napping. 

Its not outright discouragement but parents do tend to buy new sets for sons and the daughters gets to play with their brothers’ sets. 

My husband, brother and dad are visual spatial challenged.  They find Legos difficult so they don’t play. However my dad and then my husband bought Legos for me.  They are really bad with GPS and assembling IKEA furniture. My mom finds Legos easy.

[moonflower]

Yeah, I wonder about correlation vs causation too. Are they sure that boys aren't just more likely to want to play these types of games, and therefore develop these skills more readily than girls (or that girls who do like to play these types of games have that kind of inherent brain power at the same level as boys who like to play these types of games, it's just that more boys like them than girls do)?

Also, my understanding of things like male domination of engineering professions and the hard sciences, for instance, is that while a minor shift doesn't look like much in the middle of a distribution, it makes a huge difference at the tails.

[J-rap]

Our kids all loved Duplos when they were real young, both our ds and dd's.  As they got older, my ds started asking for Legos, from the simple sets to the more complex ones and created his own designs too, while my dd's slowly lost interest even though they still loved imagination and creativity, not just via Legos.  They wanted to keep adding little people and creatures to their play until the set itself wasn't important anymore, whereas my ds became more intrigued with the set design.

I have no idea what that means.  We also got our ds a baby doll at one point and a male barbie, but he had no interest at all.  (On the other hand, he was attached to his Woody and Buzz Lightyear dolls -- or whatever you'd call them -- for a long time!)

[LMD]

It's a lighthearted article, interesting bit of fun. It does mention the correlation/causation thing. I just thought it was cool. ?

[alisoncooks]

My girls enjoy their Legos. They do like the Friends line, mainly because they love animals, and many of those sets come with pets. And youngest DD is obsessed with the Elves line (because...dragons). 

They both love Minecraft. 

[Arcadia]

4 hours ago, LMD said:

It's a lighthearted article, interesting bit of fun. It does mention the correlation/causation thing. I just thought it was cool. ?

 

From the research link, https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geosphere/article/527298

”Male and female students display significant differences in spatial skills, especially for mental rotation, with males outperforming females. However, gender disparities are fully mediated after adjusting for a variety of academic factors and whether students frequently played with construction-based toys. This indicates that gender differences are experiential rather than biological in origin. This study suggests that both formal academic training and extracurricular activities appear to develop spatial skills throughout students’ lives and indicates that systematic testing of spatial skills and formal training opportunities for students would facilitate improved spatial reasoning among students. We hypothesize that formal training opportunities for spatial reasoning could increase the potential pool of students who successfully enter STEM careers, including the geosciences, especially among women.”

My husband had a really hard time with Engineering Drawing (isometric view and all those) course in the general engineering modules in first year undergrad.  It makes him felt defeated and he opt for Electrical Engineering over Mechanical or Civil Engineering when we get to choose after year one semester one. Most who scored well opt for Mechanical Engineering regardless of gender. My Civil Engineering schoolmates with weaker visual spatial skills do suffer more during land surveying class (mainly lab) rather than engineering geology class (more theory).

For my alma mater, Architecture has an aptitude test for people applying for that undergrad major. The gender ratio is more even in Architecture and we (schoolmates) were guessing it was due to the artistic aspects. You not only have to visualize 3D in your head, you have to draw it out freehand. The Mechanical Engineering undergrads didn’t have to draw anything free hand.

I do think that if visual spatial skills were tested before college, people might actually think they are bad at it and give up. On the other hand, the research author could have administered a visual spatial test for students accepted into her geoscience major and have a summer remedial course for anyone who miss the mark. 

My former high school had those career counseling aptitude tests as part of career guidance course. I was on a engineering track in 11th and 12th grade. Some male classmates end up “fleeing” to major in accounting instead of engineering. 

[sweet2ndchance]

We bought 4 Lego Classic sets last year during the Christmas sales. All total, we got over 1000 basic lego bricks for around $50. None of the pieces are super specialized, most are regular rectangular pieces of different sizes plus plenty of wheels of different sizes, transluscent pieces for windows and glass...our 5yo really likes the ball hitch pieces to make trucks that can pull trailers. We have also purchased sets that have the specialized pieces as we have found them for a price we are willing to pay. So far, 5yo ds puts the specialized sets together with dad and then the pieces end up mixed in with the rest. He uses his imagination with those special pieces to put them together in ways I would have never thought of! Left to his own devices with Legos, he makes some pretty amazing things!

[JIN MOUSA]

3 minutes ago, sweet2ndchance said:

We bought 4 Lego Classic sets last year during the Christmas sales. All total, we got over 1000 basic lego bricks for around $50. None of the pieces are super specialized, most are regular rectangular pieces of different sizes plus plenty of wheels of different sizes, transluscent pieces for windows and glass...our 5yo really likes the ball hitch pieces to make trucks that can pull trailers. We have also purchased sets that have the specialized pieces as we have found them for a price we are willing to pay. So far, 5yo ds puts the specialized sets together with dad and then the pieces end up mixed in with the rest. He uses his imagination with those special pieces to put them together in ways I would have never thought of! Left to his own devices with Legos, he makes some pretty amazing things!

Do you mind sharing the specific items you got? I would love to get some sets like that!

[Junie]

I was just looking at Lego sets with dd7.  She told me she wants some new Legos for her birthday. 

After reading this thread, I didn't want to guide her at all.  I sorted out the sets that are based on movies that she hasn't watched yet (Star Wars, superheroes, Harry Potter) and just left everything else in for her to look at.

She immediately dismissed the City series and then saw one of the Friends sets.  Her response: "That would be *perfect*!"

LOL.

She likes the snow chalet because it comes with a Husky puppy.  :)

[Targhee]

18 hours ago, LMD said:

I read this article this morning and thought it was interesting! Always happy to find justification for the amount of money we've dropped on little plastic bricks... ?

Students who had played with certain video games - adventure games with complex maps, certain sports games, and simulation games like Minecraft, as well as those who had played with construction toys like Lego, tended to be good at spatial cognition. Even more interesting they found that there was no difference in spatial cognition between males and females - if both had played with these games or toys.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/spacex-launch-universal-music-the-love-protein-and-more-1.4526115/lego-and-video-games-stem-the-gender-divide-1.4526169

Don’t read cause and effect. There’s a correlation, not causation.  What if kids who play games with complex maps, Minecraft, and LEGO do so *because* they are innately good at spacial cognition? We all tend to engage in things we can be successful at. It’s self reinforcing.

That being said, who does NOT let their girls play with LEGO if they want? My girls (and DS) all play with them. I played with them as a kid (and Dh did not).

I am with you that girls should have the chance to play LEGO! So should boys ? 

[Frances]

17 hours ago, JIN MOUSA said:

Lego agreed with you in 1974. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/equa-lego-ty/

My beef with Lego today is how many tiny, specialized pieces there are, and how it feels necessary to follow instructions to build something. They don't sell sets that are just bricks anymore. I'm looking at getting some lots off eBay that don't include the scads of mini randomness. 

 

edited for spelling

You might look at K’nex as an alternative. My son loved building stuff, but never by following instructions for a particular set. He always designed and built his own creations, usually with moving parts. His grandparents gave him several K’nex kits, both general and specialized, and all the parts were easily used in his creations. He inherited a huge box of mixed Lego pieces from a neighbor boy, but never got into them nearly as much.

[SKL]

I have two daughters.  One of them has always loved Lego as well as puzzles, engineering kits, and all kinds of building stuff.  Unsurprisingly, she has pretty good spatial skills.

The other kid has never had an interest in those toys, despite having the same access as her sister.  She does not have good spatial skills at all.

However, I would propose a different causation theory.  I think if something is unusually hard for you going in, you aren't going to find it fun and you aren't going to choose that activity much.  That would be the case if you had a weakness in spatial or vision skills going in.  It does not follow that the use of Lego prevents these problems.

[sweet2ndchance]

1 hour ago, JIN MOUSA said:

Do you mind sharing the specific items you got? I would love to get some sets like that!

 

It was the Lego Medium Creative Brick Box that we got. Our local Walmart over ordered I guess because they had them for $25 each last fall and then ran a 50% off sale in December. Like I said we grabbed 4 boxes for about $50.

[Targhee]

I personally don’t like the color pink, and the themes of many of the “girly” sets. But some people do, and that’s super - if you don’t find a different set. There’s a lot out there

As to tiny specialized parts, my kids use them in very creative ways that have nothing to do with their intending purpose. It’s great! I had classic legos and one set that was a spaceship with a couple of seats, bricks with computer screens painted on them, a lever handle, and hatches in a hinge (like a jet cockpit’s) - they were always the pieces I dug our first! I didn’t always build a spaceship, but having those unique and more detailed pieces gave me options that square bricks didn’t. 

And as to feeling like you can’t build anything except the sets, I don’t think that is the case, but I think if that is all people want it for that’s ok. People like to build models, and building the plans is like building a model. My DS has a large, complex city build that he keeps up. One day he may take it down but for the last year it’s been up.  He also has dozens of sets mixed up together in a bin (Star Wars, creator, LotR, Classic, City) as well as bulk random pieces we bought off eBay and they get plenty of use.

i guess I’m saying there are a lot of options for LEGO out there, and the only thing that will confine your building is your tastes (eg “I don’t want mixed up colors” or “I only work in black”), your requirements (eg “I need to have these particular animal fugues” or “I keep my builds intact and don’t mix pieces between sets”) or your imagination* - not the brick colors or shapes, not your gender.

Have fun building!

ETA *or if you don’t have strong spatial skills (ergo it’s more challenge than fun) or favor other activities!

[vonfirmath]

19 hours ago, hjffkj said:

Legos are loved by all in this family, me included

 

I love Legos. Elves are my favorite. I love Friends too. I occasionally buy others. But my interest in Legos started with the Homemaking series they had back in the 1970s, and I still find myself much more interested in playing "house" with Legos than shoot them up or capture the bad guys.

 

So I'm all-in on Lego having series that focus more on day to day living of their Lego people than action.  (And lots of animals. My daughter's favorite parts of Legos is the animals. Including dragons and "make them yourself" type animals. She uses Legos to make environments for the animals to live in, and houses, etc.)

 

YES Lego has had "Lego City" for a while -- but cities are more than Fire Stations, Police Stations, and vehicles. It took Friends to get an assortment of shops. Homes! A school! A Barn, a Riding school, A Hotel. A Hospital!  Do you know how long Lego fans have bene yearning for a hospital? In all those years of Lego City there was --  not enough. And what there was was more about the Vehicles associated and not playing in the hospital itself. Friends buildings have interiors and can be actually played with. You can take your customer inside and purchase items. Have the people interact with each other. Etc.  They come with lots of accessories to facilitate this sort of play.

 

 

 

[shawthorne44]

2 hours ago, Junie said:

...

She likes the snow chalet because it comes with a Husky puppy.  ?

It is the sets with horses that are popular with DD.   

Lego story:  I mentioned the ManCave to a mom friend of mine.   She said "Which room is that?"   I said, "The Lego Room."   

 

[SKL]

And I have no problem with "girly" sets like the Friends series.  There is nothing wrong with pink, purple, and friend themes.  (Plus, they are mostly not pink and purple nowadays and would be fun for boys as well as girls.)

My kids have had a variety of sets, from vehicles, to Chima, to Harry Potter, and including a number of Friends sets.  The fave:

https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Friends-Amusement-Coaster-41130/dp/B01CU9WV32/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1531504328&sr=8-1&keywords=legos+friends+amusement+park

 

[hjffkj]

2 hours ago, vonfirmath said:

 

I love Legos. Elves are my favorite. I love Friends too. I occasionally buy others. But my interest in Legos started with the Homemaking series they had back in the 1970s, and I still find myself much more interested in playing "house" with Legos than shoot them up or capture the bad guys.

 

So I'm all-in on Lego having series that focus more on day to day living of their Lego people than action.  (And lots of animals. My daughter's favorite parts of Legos is the animals. Including dragons and "make them yourself" type animals. She uses Legos to make environments for the animals to live in, and houses, etc.)

 

YES Lego has had "Lego City" for a while -- but cities are more than Fire Stations, Police Stations, and vehicles. It took Friends to get an assortment of shops. Homes! A school! A Barn, a Riding school, A Hotel. A Hospital!  Do you know how long Lego fans have bene yearning for a hospital? In all those years of Lego City there was --  not enough. And what there was was more about the Vehicles associated and not playing in the hospital itself. Friends buildings have interiors and can be actually played with. You can take your customer inside and purchase items. Have the people interact with each other. Etc.  They come with lots of accessories to facilitate this sort of play.

 

 

 

 

I would be 100% on board with Lego friends and Elves if they hadn't changed the people.  I mean they can't even sit down securely!  It is ridiculous.  Lego used to have a set called Lego Paradisa (something like that.)  It was more geared to girls and I really likes those ones as a kid, while also loving the islander, pirate, and knights sets too.  That series never really took off with more complicated sets but I always wish it had.  I really hate the people in friends and elves

[vonfirmath]

They did a lot of research on the people in Friends.

 

When I started with Lego, the main people were not minifigs -- it has not always been that way. They were these head and shoulders piece that you built up into a person with blocks. The minifigs were "Kids" in the family.  The minidolls are working very well for the esthetic in the Lego Friends play and you can always take minifigs from other sets to use with Lego Friends sets -- that's the beauty of Lego. You can mix and match to your heart's content.

 

(And the elves would not work as well as minifigures at all, IMHO)

 

When my kids play with Lego -- they do not toss out the minidolls the way so many adults do. They put minifigures, minidolls, and non-Lego "people" all together in playing with their creations -- both of them. My son and my daughter.

 

 

[Barb_]

Count me in as a lego friends convert. Only one of my older girls cared anything about legos growing up and it was mostly the programmable mindstorm set she played with. My son built the sets and took them apart later to create guns and spaceships and jets. He played with the minifigs, but not along with the sets. The girls weren’t interested in building for its own set, nor did they want to play with objects. LEGO friends are great for the reasons others mentioned. You build the set and then there is hours of play value attached. My teens even bought themselves sets they identified with for display.

[Targhee]

3 hours ago, vonfirmath said:

 

I love Legos. Elves are my favorite. I love Friends too. I occasionally buy others. But my interest in Legos started with the Homemaking series they had back in the 1970s, and I still find myself much more interested in playing "house" with Legos than shoot them up or capture the bad guys.

 

So I'm all-in on Lego having series that focus more on day to day living of their Lego people than action.  (And lots of animals. My daughter's favorite parts of Legos is the animals. Including dragons and "make them yourself" type animals. She uses Legos to make environments for the animals to live in, and houses, etc.)

 

YES Lego has had "Lego City" for a while -- but cities are more than Fire Stations, Police Stations, and vehicles. It took Friends to get an assortment of shops. Homes! A school! A Barn, a Riding school, A Hotel. A Hospital!  Do you know how long Lego fans have bene yearning for a hospital? In all those years of Lego City there was --  not enough. And what there was was more about the Vehicles associated and not playing in the hospital itself. Friends buildings have interiors and can be actually played with. You can take your customer inside and purchase items. Have the people interact with each other. Etc.  They come with lots of accessories to facilitate this sort of play.

 

 

 

Wait, but couldn’t you have just built a hospital? I mean, that’s the point right? It’s like building with blocks (except they are smaller and stick) and you can make it whatever you want.  I suppose it’s different if you use them more like a model kit though.

eTA DS’s City line detective office/pool hall/bagel shop building you can play inside of. Same with a Creator line cabin.

[vonfirmath]

9 minutes ago, Targhee said:

Wait, but couldn’t you have just built a hospital? I mean, that’s the point right? It’s like building with blocks (except they are smaller and stick) and you can make it whatever you want.  I suppose it’s different if you use them more like a model kit though.

eTA DS’s City line detective office/pool hall/bagel shop building you can play inside of. Same with a Creator line cabin.

 

Then why have Lego City, Lego Super Heroes, etc. sets at all. Lets just have blocks and nothing else and expect everyone to make it all themselves?  (Thte detective office is not part of Lego City line. It is Creatore Expert. Nor are the Lego Creator cabins part of Lego City.  And it is recently that they have started making those houses with more internal details, etc -- perhaps partly because of the success of Friends.)

 

Lego makes their money on the sets. People want some inspiration for what they make, and the step by step instructions. and then to modify from there. Very few can make things entirely from scratch.

 

[Targhee]

18 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

 

Then why have Lego City, Lego Super Heroes, etc. sets at all. Lets just have blocks and nothing else and expect everyone to make it all themselves?  (Thte detective office is not part of Lego City line. It is Creatore Expert. Nor are the Lego Creator cabins part of Lego City.  And it is recently that they have started making those houses with more internal details, etc -- perhaps partly because of the success of Friends.)

 

Lego makes their money on the sets. People want some inspiration for what they make, and the step by step instructions. and then to modify from there. Very few can make things entirely from scratch.

 

So what you’re after is a model kit?  Or a playscape? That’s fair. And it would be frustrating not to have models you want (have you checked out diecast midels - almost all vehicles!). 

What I see with LEGO is a kit that has model (or sometimes two or three) instructions with it, but it can be made into all sorts of things.  They don’t always look as polished as the kit, but for a toy I think it’s awesome!!

Sorry I misspoke about the line the detective office was in.

 

[KungFuPanda]

I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t let their daughter play with legos or wouldn’t buy her a set if it was on her birthday list. 

[ErinE]

I have girls and boys and they all play with the Legos, whatever the theme. Don’t knock the pink and purple if you have a child who loves the colors. My daughter picked out several Friends sets, like the ice cream shop and the veterinarian, and she’s played with the Star Wars and Chimera sets. She never requested any of the non-Friends sets, so I didn’t get them for her. She does own multiple light sabers so it’s not like she doesn’t like Star Wars. Everything ends up in two big LEGO bins anyways. When the kids has friends over (even age 15 and 16), they request access to the toy closet so they can dig through the bins.

[Sk8ermaiden]

DD LOVES Lego Friends, Elves, Harry potter, Technic, and the City stuff. After it's built, it eventually gets destroyed (DS usually has something to do with that ?) and put in the 8 million giant bins with the rest of the Lego. SO much Lego. And out of the bins she builds things from her imagination. Usually whole neighborhoods. It has been so fun watching her creations grow from random conglomerations of bricks ("Look, it's a rocketship with a waterslide!") To well thought out designs.

[Rockhopper]

Another Lego Friends/Elves convert here.

My 7 year old is Lego-obsessed, and I'm not sure that would've happened without those lines. And despite any concerns I had about "pink and purple Legos," she is the most prototypically perfect "plays creatively with Legos" kid I can imagine. The sets all get reworked. We currently have what is becoming a city block of apartments and stores (well, a coffee shop) upstairs, repurposed from Lego Friends bedroom sets plus other pieces. The minidolls travel between the buildings on a monorail she built of her own imagination. There's also an elevator to connect the apartment building's two levels, built from Technic pieces included with various Friends sets. "The Technic pieces are my favorites, Mommy. You can make so many things with them."

All those specialty pieces? The coffee shop has a hot chocolate (because she likes it better than coffee) automated machine/dispenser. She used sliding pieces (I don't know what they're called) to make a conveyor belt system that the mug slides on, then a faucet and clear piece to make something that looks like a coffee urn. Each of the apartments has a toilet. They're each different depending on what parts she could find. I know one of them has a life preserver seat from a City set.

She loves the Elves, too. Obsessed with dragons, so the dragons get endlessly re-built (6 wings! two feet!) and then drawn on paper, etc. I've been asked to sit through multiple lectures (and required to take notes!!) on various dragons (she gives them pseudo-scientific names). She draw examples, scale drawings, etc on the white board while I sit and listen. Habitat, diet, etc. All in some way inspired from the Lego dragons.

For a while, one of the mini-dolls (representing her) was a researcher high in the mountains learning about a rare dragon. I was down in the valley (also a mini-doll). There was no cell phone communication, so she used string and specialty pieces to rig a pulley system and a basket so we could send notes up and down the mountain to each other.

The mini-dolls? I was pretty down on them when they first came out. But they are so much more *relatable* to her. One of them just travelled with her on her trip out of state -- Emily (the mini-doll) was very excited to be on an airplane for the first time. The mini-dolls bend and move more realistically. She makes clothing for them out of bits of fabric. She has painted some of them to give them different hair or clothes. She has baked Sculpey onto them to change their looks.

(To give credit where credit is due, a LOT of her creative play ideas have been inspired by watching EllieV's YouTube videos, which are a brilliant way to get girls involved in Lego. Her enthusiasm is contagious!)

In addition to the "basic" pieces that come with Elves and Friends sets, she has a (very old) basic blocks set, a City set or two and my seashore set. And sometimes she raids her big brother's Lego and Orient Expedition stash. But the bulk of her building comes from Elves and Friends, and there is no way that anything about those sets has stifled her or limited her creativity! ?

 

[Carrie12345]

I wasn't given any growing up (I did have Matchbox cars), but I love them today. I have relatively crummy spacial cognition, but I can follow instructions!  I am a kit person, not an imaginative builder.

I have done one purple kit. I found it pretty boring compared to the more intricate "not specifically girl" kits.

My youngest is my real Lego guy, but my girls are Minecraft fans.

[Tanaqui]

On 7/13/2018 at 4:44 PM, KungFuPanda said:

I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t let their daughter play with legos or wouldn’t buy her a set if it was on her birthday list. 

 

Maybe, but I certainly do know people who wouldn't think to buy legos for a girl if it was not on her birthday list or suggest them to a girl child, and I absolutely know people my age who were discouraged from playing with "boy" toys as children. I'm not that old.

When they say "Let girls play with Lego", they don't just mean "allow them" but "encourage them".

[Crimson Wife]

1 hour ago, Tanaqui said:

Maybe, but I certainly do know people who wouldn't think to buy legos for a girl if it was not on her birthday list or suggest them to a girl child, and I absolutely know people my age who were discouraged from playing with "boy" toys as children. I'm not that old.

When they say "Let girls play with Lego", they don't just mean "allow them" but "encourage them".

Our local library has an hour each Saturday where they bring out giant bins of Legos for everyone to build with in one of the meeting rooms. They also have several Mindstorms sets for older kids.

I have definitely noticed a big gender gap in who attends. I will sometimes bring just youngest DD by herself if DS is busy but I have a sense that most of the girls in attendance are there with one or more brothers rather than alone.

[vonfirmath]

17 hours ago, Rockhopper said:

Another Lego Friends/Elves convert here.

 

(To give credit where credit is due, a LOT of her creative play ideas have been inspired by watching EllieV's YouTube videos, which are a brilliant way to get girls involved in Lego. Her enthusiasm is contagious!)

In addition to the "basic" pieces that come with Elves and Friends sets, she has a (very old) basic blocks set, a City set or two and my seashore set. And sometimes she raids her big brother's Lego and Orient Expedition stash. But the bulk of her building comes from Elves and Friends, and there is no way that anything about those sets has stifled her or limited her creativity! ?

 

 

I recently found ellie V and have been advertising her to my almost-7 year old in hopes of kickstarting more Lego play. (And more productive youtube watching than what she sees now)

 

[Emba]

I had a big basic Lego set as a child. I was oldest, so it got passed down and played with, and added to by my younger sister and brother too. But my brother and sister both have excellent spatial sense and mine is terrible. ☺

my daughter has had access to duplo and then lego since she was 4. She just never got into it. Her spatial sense is lacking. She has never been great at puzzles but she likes them. My oldest son likes Legos more, but really be plays with the mini figs and only builds very basic things with blocks. He hates puzzles, and has poor spatial sense. The youngest son loves Legos and puzzles and is just much better with spatial tasks in general.

I can't draw any conclusions about Legos and spatial sense from this, other than that my sample size is too small to be meaningful.?

[Dmmetler]

We have a room of legos. Castle, Harry Potter, Ninjago, Egypt, Atlantis, Education, Creator and some Friends. Lots of dragons, snakes, and other animals. Plus many, many lots of bulk bricks bought on EBay and Lego stores. And lots of other stuff thaf gets played with along with legos-lots of small animals and people, Playmobil, Pokemon figures, superheroes. Many minifigs from the blind packs. 

At 13, DD doesn’t play much by herself anymore, but whenever we have two or more kids, that’s where they end up. 

 

I figure DD’s college fund is in Lego-she can separate out the sets and sell them.