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To continue developing awareness and participation of CedarLUG in Cedar
City, Utah, I decided to do five one-hour-a-week summer building camps using
last year’s designer sets.
I teamed up with our local Parks and Recreation office to sponsor the camp
and to provide a place for us to build.
Parks and Recreation sent a promotional flier, towards the end of April, to
each school in the Cedar City area. My targeted age group was 8 to 99 years old
(of course, hoping to have some parents enroll too. Nothing beats finding an
AFOL!). I had 23 children sign up with ages varying from 7 (two pleaded for an
exception but struggled to keep up) to 12. I offered 4 different sessions but
used only 3 sessions with 9, 7 and 7 participants, respectively.
Each child that signed up; paid for and received a High Flyers (set number
4098) for participating in the camp.
The days are as follows:
Day One: High Flyers (4098)
Day Two: Mini Robots (4097)
Day Three: Micro Wheels (4096)
Day Four: Wild Collection (4101)
Day Five: High Flyers (4098) – Participants take their models home.
I was fortunate to already have 10 Mini Robots, 10 Will Collections and 2
Micro Wheels in my collection. I was able to purchase an additional 8 Micro
Wheels from Shop@Home. By providing a High Flyer set to each participant I was
able to have 10 complete building sets, one for each participant, for each of
the days.
With one of the sets from each theme, I would pre-build different models.
After I had the “example” models created, I would separate all of the pieces
from the other sets into different ziplock baggies for each participant.
I separated the bricks into bags for each individual model on a hunch that;
if the pieces were all together the younger participants would be frustrated
over not finding bricks, let alone not finishing a model. My hunch was correct.
The builders needed the finding time of each piece to be reduced so they could
focus on the just building. This was a great idea but took a lot of preparation
on my part. Especially when I was running a camp on Tuesday and Thursday. I
would have to separate the pieces on Monday for Tuesday’s class and then on
Wednesday take the completed models apart and place them in the bags, again.
In one camp I tried to have some of the older participants build a model
from a bag of unseparated bricks. Four of the five became frustrated over the
process and gave up.
During the camp, I would hand the participant all of the LEGO pieces from
their set in the individual ziplock bags. Then I would display a model to
build. The participant would open the corresponding bag and build the model
without any instructions. The models (if you have previously built a designer
set) were from “One Brick” to “Three Bricks” in difficulty. I would usually
start with one or two “One Brick” models to warm up and continue in difficulty
up to the “Three Brick” models. I would try to have two “One Brick” models to
build at once, and then I would separate the participants into two groups and
have them build one model and then switch. That way they could see the model
and handle it, if needed.
The designer series was excellent for this type of camp because so many
models can be built at one-time. Great idea LEGO!
Of course, each participant would build at a different speed. With that in
mind, I would wait until a majority of participants had finished a model and
then I would allow them to continue on to the next model. While the faster
builders pushed on to a new model, I would help the remaining builders to finish
their models.
To date, I have finished two complete camps and I am two-fifths of the way
through the final camp and have yet to encounter a situation where a participant
felt bad for being behind or not finishing all of their models. It seemed they
were so entranced with building that they never paid attention to what others
were working on.
At 12 and younger most builders are still developing their
three-dimensional perception and fine motor skills.
Working with the models proved to be challenging, to say the least, for all
of the participants. As expected though, children who sign-up for a LEGO camp
love a challenge. I would hear, “I don’t get it” or “This is too hard”. So I
would ask, “Do you need help?” “No”, would always be the reply. They just
wanted to express their feelings and then tackle the problem.
Some of the younger children would usually only finish a portion of their
models. Whereas most of the participants would finish all of their models
before the hour expired. I would then allow them to build “My Own Creations”
(MOCs) from the unused pieces that were also in a ziplock bag. The MOC would
have to follow the theme of the day.
They loved to build the models but they loved to MOC more! Towards the
end, the faster builders would hurry through just to MOC.
One class I had the participants MOC for the entire hour but it proved to
daunting. Under the pressure to come up with an idea, they couldn’t think of
anything to build and then built nothing. Whereas, having the participants
build models from a theme would inspire them to a great MOC at the end of the
hour.
At the end of each camp I would take a digital picture of each participant
with his or her models and MOCs. I then created a Brickshelf folder for each
participant under my account and placed his or her photos in their respective
folder. For a child, it is too cool to know that you have a picture; but just
not a picture, a LEGO picture, on the Internet. I would also encourage them to
build a MOC at home during the week and bring it to class the following week.
On average, 2 or 3 participants would bring a MOC.
On the last day of the camp, I provided a paper detailing the LEGO sets
that we had used during the camp and also a listing of Internet sites that
showcase LEGO.
Overall the camp was a huge success!
I had moms telling me, “this is the best thing my son/daughter has done all
summer” or “My son/daughter cannot wait until the next class”.
The participants would beg, “Can I come to the next camp?” or “Let’s do
this again next month”.
The camp was a wonderful way to build awareness in the community about
CedarLUG. I plan to continue to follow-up with some of the older builders and
invite them to LUG meetings in the future. Plus, the response has been so
positive that I plan to have a follow-up camp over either Thanksgiving or
Christmas Recess where I plan to build either all Star Wars or Harry Potter.
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