Subject:
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Re: A first step
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Mon, 26 Jul 2004 13:45:15 GMT
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Viewed:
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1344 times
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Having my now 9 year old son brought me out of my dark ages and we had many
happy years discovering and sharing our Lego hobby together, but then the birth
of my now 2.5 year old daughter put me in dark age II (no time, no money, my
Lego room became the nursery etc etc). The little one put everything in her
mouth (except food, but that's another story), and so the older kid had to keep
his Lego in his room (mine got put in storage). If he wanted to build in the
living area it had to be with the Duplo.
The toddler has, unfortunately, only shown a passing interest in Duplo. Her
brother at the same age played with it constantly. She's slightly more likely
to play with Duplo if her brother is (sounds familiar Allister!); he on the
other hand has benefited from learning advanced building techniques with System
and now builds the most wonderful Duplo sculptures (which his sister then takes
great delight in wrecking - much screaming and yelling results).
Anyway, I bought one of the Lego playtables a couple of weeks ago, the idea
being that it would go in what will eventually be our rumpus room but is still a
downstairs garage full of junk. I figured by the time we actually fitted out the
playroom our little one would be old enough for Lego and wouldn't eat it
anymore.
I decided I'd better build the table now before putting it down in storage,
just to make sure it was all there etc, it took hours and so got left in the
middle of the loungeroom overnight. Come morning, 9 y.o and 2 y.o are both
happily sitting at the table together quietly building. Came home that night
and they were both straight back into it, same thing the next day, and the
next... Unfortunately the playtable took up way too much space in the middle
of the room, so I had to majorly rearrange the furniture to fit it in
permanently (evicting a much needed shelf unit in the process - but it's been
worth it!).
I would never have thought to introduce my toddler to system at this age, but
she absolutely loves it. Building is rather basic at this stage: towers, great
long lines of various shapes laid end to end, animals arranged under trees etc,
but there have also been a few "Mummy, look at the <thing> I made!" moments too
- where, if you squint just a bit, you can see that it is indeed a "thing".
My toddler does need help to get the bricks apart, but she also has that problem
with the Duplo. Oh, and so far none of it has gone in her mouth except for an
antenna but I think it was meant to be whiskers :) About the worst she does is
dump a heap of Lego into her toy kettle to "feed" to her doll, but she seems to
be catching onto the "Lego stays on the Lego table or the table goes away"
message pretty quickly.
My son's been outbuilding me for years, I guess my "baby" is not far behind. Me
- I don't interfere, I quietly watch and wonder and let them go for it!
Mark, maybe you're bypassing Duplo too :) Closely supervise, let your daughter
set her own pace, help her when she asks and continue to set a wonderful example
with your own enthusiasm.
Deidre
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: A first step
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| (...) Congratulations. (...) I agree with Tim. I think the opposite is the case. I have a six year old boy that was born four years before I came out of my 'dark age'. However, he's had Lego almost from birth, starting with Primo (which he wasn't (...) (20 years ago, 26-Jul-04, to lugnet.general)
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