5 ms·

One of the best aspects of LEGO is teaching kids creativity. In my childhood, I never had a helicopter set or anything fancy, I only had bricks and LEGO people,

One of the best aspects of LEGO is teaching kids creativity. In my childhood, I never had a helicopter set or anything fancy, I only had bricks and LEGO people, but I built whole cities, helicopters, beaches with palm trees, trucks, airplanes. I only needed a picture, but most of the time not even that. I have been called "very creative person" multiple times over my life, and I'm pretty sure part of the reason is playing hundreds of hours with LEGO this way. The modern implementation of LEGO is Minecraft, so you should allow your child to play it.

Tomte 6y ago
Lego Minecraft is actually quite good: "classic" two-by-four and two-by-two bricks (modern Lego is mostly one stud wide, because you can have more detail without making the models very large), no stickers (everything is pad printed), and sensible colors. And a reasonable amount of not-tiny bricks (in Lego world, in absolute terms it's still an expensive toy). Many people don't like the Minecraft mini figures, but you can just throw them in some bin and ignore them.
robbiep 6y ago
My brother, sister and I inherited a lot of Lego from older cousins. No real sets, just masses of pieces. We built an entire city, rudimentary economy rules, I wrote my first computer program to balance the cheque book stubs that we wrote each other... we must have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on that verandah
weego 6y ago
As a creative playground my oldest has got into Lego Worlds much easier than Minecraft but it's also far more limiting, looking forward to carrying that over and teaching them the possibilities around redstone
zokier 6y ago
The transition of LEGO to more of a model building thing has been interesting, as has the increase in level of obsession places like HN have for LEGO. I feel that this is field ripe for disruption; for someone to build model kits that are as accessible and approachable as LEGO, but drop the pretence of being general bricks.
- darkerside 6y ago
  IKEA for fun? :)
tartoran 6y ago
Whats the best age to introduce lego to kids?
- ehou 6y ago
  We started giving Lego sets for our kids 1st birthdays ;). The eldest - 8yo - is now building anything on any scale in no time. Just made 7 MOCs for colleagues this Christmas with him designing and me clicking in BrickLink studio. So much fun :)
- incanus77 6y ago
  I started with sets when I was 2, over 40 years ago. I think it’s more a question of instilling the motivation to build and be curious. For me, it was inability to afford any other toys, so LEGO became my dream medium. For others, that might be an exciting challenge posed. For example, during COVID we have been doing weekly “LEGO Masters” challenges with my niece and nephews over Zoom, where we pick a theme and then present to each other a week later. They are 5, 5, and 8, and then my partner’s brother, cousin, and I routinely join in. It’s not as much a competition as it is a creativity prompt, an encouragement of presentation and sharing (and thinking about your share of the presentation time), and a way to get to know each other better while distant. Incidentally, I got into Rebrickable a few months ago after starting to (finally) organize my collection during lockdown and these challenges. I spent a couple hours checking off nearly all of the sets that I know that I own, and when I was done, the site told me the value was about $25,000. I’m kind of shocked.
  - tartoran 6y ago
    My son is 2 1/2 and loves to do jigsaw puzzles but with lego, he seems not very interested yet. Maybe 3d reasoning develops a bit later.. But for around that age or a bit older like 3-4, what sets work best? Simple block sets? Sets that include small lego people? Thank you. I grew up behind the iron curtain and lego wasn’t available until I was a bit older and we were playing with other things
    - incanus77 6y ago

Tomte 6y ago

Lego Minecraft is actually quite good: "classic" two-by-four and two-by-two bricks (modern Lego is mostly one stud wide, because you can have more detail without making the models very large), no stickers (everything is pad printed), and sensible colors. And a reasonable amount of not-tiny bricks (in Lego world, in absolute terms it's still an expensive toy). Many people don't like the Minecraft mini figures, but you can just throw them in some bin and ignore them.

robbiep 6y ago

My brother, sister and I inherited a lot of Lego from older cousins. No real sets, just masses of pieces. We built an entire city, rudimentary economy rules, I wrote my first computer program to balance the cheque book stubs that we wrote each other... we must have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on that verandah

weego 6y ago

As a creative playground my oldest has got into Lego Worlds much easier than Minecraft but it's also far more limiting, looking forward to carrying that over and teaching them the possibilities around redstone

zokier 6y ago

The transition of LEGO to more of a model building thing has been interesting, as has the increase in level of obsession places like HN have for LEGO. I feel that this is field ripe for disruption; for someone to build model kits that are as accessible and approachable as LEGO, but drop the pretence of being general bricks.

darkerside 6y ago
IKEA for fun? :)

tartoran 6y ago

Whats the best age to introduce lego to kids?

ehou 6y ago
We started giving Lego sets for our kids 1st birthdays ;). The eldest - 8yo - is now building anything on any scale in no time. Just made 7 MOCs for colleagues this Christmas with him designing and me clicking in BrickLink studio. So much fun :)
incanus77 6y ago
I started with sets when I was 2, over 40 years ago. I think it’s more a question of instilling the motivation to build and be curious. For me, it was inability to afford any other toys, so LEGO became my dream medium. For others, that might be an exciting challenge posed. For example, during COVID we have been doing weekly “LEGO Masters” challenges with my niece and nephews over Zoom, where we pick a theme and then present to each other a week later. They are 5, 5, and 8, and then my partner’s brother, cousin, and I routinely join in. It’s not as much a competition as it is a creativity prompt, an encouragement of presentation and sharing (and thinking about your share of the presentation time), and a way to get to know each other better while distant. Incidentally, I got into Rebrickable a few months ago after starting to (finally) organize my collection during lockdown and these challenges. I spent a couple hours checking off nearly all of the sets that I know that I own, and when I was done, the site told me the value was about $25,000. I’m kind of shocked.
- tartoran 6y ago
  My son is 2 1/2 and loves to do jigsaw puzzles but with lego, he seems not very interested yet. Maybe 3d reasoning develops a bit later.. But for around that age or a bit older like 3-4, what sets work best? Simple block sets? Sets that include small lego people? Thank you. I grew up behind the iron curtain and lego wasn’t available until I was a bit older and we were playing with other things
  - incanus77 6y ago