Let girls play Lego!

[Bluegoat]

I kind of hate lego, my kids just won't keep it tidy.

Anyway, it's free here for anyone who wants to build with it.  I do think ds has bene more interested than the girls.  As far as causes of differences, I don't think it is even just that having a talent makes you interested.  I think two people with equal potential ability will develop differently based on different interests, and that is ok and perfectly natural.

I do think the idea of having more person like dolls, to encourage girls who are often more interested in social things, is an interesting idea.  It kind of annoys me though that it has to be associated with more girly colours.  The kids now seem to have a lot more rigidity about what colours are masculine and feminine.  I wouldn't care if they just added colours generally to the kits, but they've obviously skewed them "girly".  It means boys who might like the different kinds of people now are also making that association.

I'm sure it's money thing, not a good play value thing.

[wintermom]

One obvious limitation in this entire study is that it only deals with pre-constructed cube-like toys and tests, and doesn't include things like clay, plastercine, drawing, painting, human and animal figures (i.e., dolls and toys animals) and other crafts that have just as much if not more spatial qualities. And that all these activities tend to attract girls more than boys. The pencil and paper tests stick to block forms as do toys like LEGO and Rubick's cube.

Not a surprise that when you play with cubes, you can rotate cubes in your head. If the tests include items like shapes of humans, dogs, clothing, etc. perhaps there were be different results. I think these "spatial awareness" tests are very limited in the actual shapes they use. The natural world doesn't actually have many box shapes. 

[Arcadia]

3 hours ago, kdsuomi said:

I had never in my life, until recently, heard that Legos were considered boy toys because they certainly weren't when I was a kid. Is this really a thing?

 

Legos were typically found in the boys aisles of Target and the bankrupt ToysRUS. Lego Friends were found in the girls aisles.

Below quoted from 2015 is an example 

“We heard you, and we agree. Right now, our teams are working across the store to identify areas where we can phase out gender-based signage to help strike a better balance. For example, in the kids’ Bedding area, signs will no longer feature suggestions for boys or girls, just kids. In the Toys aisles, we’ll also remove reference to gender, including the use of pink, blue, yellow or green paper on the back walls of our shelves. You’ll see these changes start to happen over the next few months.” https://corporate.target.com/article/2015/08/gender-based-signs-corporate

[Tsuga]

On 7/12/2018 at 9:02 PM, LucyStoner said:

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

I bought so many girls hairs for our Lego sets. The kids fought over them until I pointed out...you can change the hair. Problem solved.

We are naturally spatial thinkers. Lego is pretty easy. I never knew Lego was a boy thing until I was like 35 and they made "girl Lego". 

But it bores them. They are quick. It is not hard to complete a set. That's the thing with girls. Hard to stick to just sets. They moved away from it when it was all boys at Lego classes. Those classes are geared towards male development so they go pretty slowly. Rockets for years, no math. Urgh. But the boys could repeat and repeat and repeat ("faster! Faster! Higher! Higher!") and it was a little mind-numbing. No "why". Which is my whole problem with the sciences in general. Oh I get it, after 40 years you are allowed to ask why and that's nice and all, but not really.

Now we do engineering at home.

They are allowed to ask "why" without boys mocking them.

[Bluegoat]

11 hours ago, Tsuga said:

I bought so many girls hairs for our Lego sets. The kids fought over them until I pointed out...you can change the hair. Problem solved.

We are naturally spatial thinkers. Lego is pretty easy. I never knew Lego was a boy thing until I was like 35 and they made "girl Lego". 

But it bores them. They are quick. It is not hard to complete a set. That's the thing with girls. Hard to stick to just sets. They moved away from it when it was all boys at Lego classes. Those classes are geared towards male development so they go pretty slowly. Rockets for years, no math. Urgh. But the boys could repeat and repeat and repeat ("faster! Faster! Higher! Higher!") and it was a little mind-numbing. No "why". Which is my whole problem with the sciences in general. Oh I get it, after 40 years you are allowed to ask why and that's nice and all, but not really.

Now we do engineering at home.

They are allowed to ask "why" without boys mocking them.

 

You know though, thinking about this, it's hard on the boys when things go at the pace of more typical girls development.  I've kind of had the sense at some activities that it's not really something you are supposed to say, but there seem to be a lot more precocious little girls than boys.  And the girls can end up taking over if there happen to be equal numbers, just because they are ready for more.

It's a good argument I think for having separate activities for girls and boys stuff sometimes.

[SKL]

I was put off by the pink "girl lego" at first too, but I think it has come a long way since then.

When I was a kid, it was primary colors and nothing to do with gender.  We didn't have any, but my granny had some at her house, and we all played with it.

I do think it, along with many other building toys, has historically been advertised using boy actors and themes.

Lucky for me, I had two older brothers, so we had building toys (mainly "girders and panels") and all of us used them.  It was still never my favorite toy.  I really liked dolls.

[TravelingChris]

I had plenty of blocks when I was little and did play with them.  I like matchbox cars too.  I didn't like Barbie and I didn['t like the doll my parents got me when I was 7-  I specifically asked for a doll whose hair grew but I didn't care a bit about the hair growing but that the doll I wanted had red hair like me. My parents didn't get what I wanted and got me the blond version of the doll,  Anyway, my spatial ability is almost totally non-existent. When I did some type of ability testing combined with career training, I got zero help in choosing a career- it said that I would be great at all three of my choices which were journalist, lawyer and professor and the only thing that was interesting to me was that I was at a 10th percentile in doing numb-boring clerical work (I was an undiagnosed ADHD child who wasn't able to drink coffee before this test) and 20th percentile in mechanical abilities (i.e. spatial ability). 

 My son has average spatial ability, my middle has probably little like me and my youngest, the only dyslexic, has fantastic abilities.  All three played with Legos though my youngest liked Playmobil more.  

 

Also, I am not even sure why spatial ability would have all that much to do with lots of STEM?  Some, certainly, and I did economics as my undergraduate major and that involved graphs (as a previous poster said, I also had problems with graphs being flipped, etc) but biology, chemistry, and many others are really not very dependent on spatial ability. 

 

[Bluegoat]

18 minutes ago, TravelingChris said:

I had plenty of blocks when I was little and did play with them.  I like matchbox cars too.  I didn't like Barbie and I didn['t like the doll my parents got me when I was 7-  I specifically asked for a doll whose hair grew but I didn't care a bit about the hair growing but that the doll I wanted had red hair like me. My parents didn't get what I wanted and got me the blond version of the doll,  Anyway, my spatial ability is almost totally non-existent. When I did some type of ability testing combined with career training, I got zero help in choosing a career- it said that I would be great at all three of my choices which were journalist, lawyer and professor and the only thing that was interesting to me was that I was at a 10th percentile in doing numb-boring clerical work (I was an undiagnosed ADHD child who wasn't able to drink coffee before this test) and 20th percentile in mechanical abilities (i.e. spatial ability). 

 My son has average spatial ability, my middle has probably little like me and my youngest, the only dyslexic, has fantastic abilities.  All three played with Legos though my youngest liked Playmobil more.  

 

Also, I am not even sure why spatial ability would have all that much to do with lots of STEM?  Some, certainly, and I did economics as my undergraduate major and that involved graphs (as a previous poster said, I also had problems with graphs being flipped, etc) but biology, chemistry, and many others are really not very dependent on spatial ability. 

 

 

Now welding, or cutting hair, those require good spacial ability.

[Crimson Wife]

4 hours ago, TravelingChris said:

  Also, I am not even sure why spatial ability would have all that much to do with lots of STEM?  Some, certainly, and I did economics as my undergraduate major and that involved graphs (as a previous poster said, I also had problems with graphs being flipped, etc) but biology, chemistry, and many others are really not very dependent on spatial ability.

The "engineering" part of the STEM acronym definitely depends on spatial ability. My DH had to do the engineering core sequence as part of his degree and I saw the assignments in his intro to mechanical engineering class. Somebody without good spatial reasoning skills would have a LOT of difficulty passing that course.

ETA: and organic chemistry DEFINITELY involves spatial reasoning. I had to get a set of those molecule building pieces to get through Orgo 1 & 2 because I couldn't visualize them in my head.

[shawthorne44]

My parents did suppress Lego play.  It had nothing to do with Lego's being a boy-thing though.  There were two toys that mom would make this sour-puss face about when the toys were mentioned, Lego and Playdoh.   I think it was more the mess, or the perceived mess.  A birthday party had to be cancelled for some reason when I was a kid, and my parents let me ask for a present.  I wanted a particular Physics textbook from the nearby University bookstore.  So, it didn't seem to hurt my STEM-ness.  

[Barb_]

1 hour ago, HeighHo said:

I like that statement "...spatial skills seem to be trainable and appears to be trained through one's interactions with the world, but spatial skills are very unevenly distributed in the population...", but it seems to say we have a lot of children who aren't interacting too much with the world.  Perhaps the cheapest way to improve that is giving every child a soccer ball and the time and space to run.  Or a pack of paper, scissors and glue sticks to make 3D models.

also interesting the sports and music are listed as ways to improve spatial ability, but sewing/crochet/knitting/whittling/paper crafts/rope&string crafts and model building (aside from lego) aren't specifically mentioned even though the problem type C listed (slices through a 3d figure) might be improved with those types of experiences more than sports/music.

I think people tend to quote each other mindlessly in these sorts of articles. It’s rare to find an unique suggestion or an original thought. Oh, the central premise is probably original, but the details (music lessons! Sports!) are usually regurgitated. I think it’s a byproduct of the information flood. 

[alisoncooks]

Bumping this older thread...

I know a lot of people don't like the Lego Friends sets, but I recently saw this new set and was pleased that it was not "girly."  Oh sure, it's still "cute" but these girls aren't baking/shopping/pet sitting...they're RACING! Yay!

https://shop.lego.com/en-US/The-Big-Race-Day-41352

(Next step: Lego Friends astronauts?) ?

[vonfirmath]

2 hours ago, alisoncooks said:

Bumping this older thread...

I know a lot of people don't like the Lego Friends sets, but I recently saw this new set and was pleased that it was not "girly."  Oh sure, it's still "cute" but these girls aren't baking/shopping/pet sitting...they're RACING! Yay!

https://shop.lego.com/en-US/The-Big-Race-Day-41352

(Next step: Lego Friends astronauts?) ?

 

It's okay.

My kid is still more interested in the pet sets. And the dog shows, etc. So I am glad they have the "traditional" type subjects represented as well. It's okay for girls to like what they like. Even if the things they like are more traditionally girly.

[alisoncooks]

5 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

 

It's okay.

My kid is still more interested in the pet sets. And the dog shows, etc. So I am glad they have the "traditional" type subjects represented as well. It's okay for girls to like what they like. Even if the things they like are more traditionally girly.

I'm not knocking the "traditionally girly" sets. We own a *lot* of them (all the pets and Elves sets, market/smoothie/beach house/Tangled/etc). We're fans. 

But I know others lament the lack of...diversity (?) in the Friends occupation/activities. So I was sharing.