LEGO Education® Simple Machines and a LEGO Balloon Car
Wednesday, June 5, 2013 at 5:00AM
One of the best additions to our LEGO resources has been the Simple Machines set from Lego Education®.
Not only has my son enjoyed free building with this set, but he has also sat down with the many instructions and has begun to build and experiment on his own.
With regular LEGOS, my son builds, we take pictures, display the finished products, and he always has fun.
With the products from LEGO Education®, however, we can delve DEEPER into learning about science, technology, education and math (STEM).
The Simple Machines set has been such a valuable resource in our home!
I did not know (until just a few months ago) that LEGO Education® makes products SPECIFICALLY for homeschoolers.
We have had the pleasure of using the StoryStarter set and also the Simple and Motorized Mechanisms set. You can see read about those on my LEGO Learning page.
This Simple Machines set with printable activity guide is another product LEGO Education® makes just for us!
STEM with LEGO Education®
The collage above takes you through one of the first lessons in the activity pack. My son built (using the instructions) a Merry-Go-Round. He learned about gears and gear ratios. He also learned lots of other great vocabulary words and concepts.
In this particular model, the gear ration is 3:1. One of the gears had 24 teeth. The other had 8. It took 3 turns of the crank to make the minifig go around one time. Then, my son modified the model just a bit to change it to a 40 tooth gear and a 24 tooth gear. The ration changed to 5:3.
I was able to talk him through all of this. The lessons are completely scripted, with a guide printed for me. A CD with printable worksheets even goes along with this set.
This would be perfect for individual homeschool use or a co-op setting, too.
Score.
This set will be an integral part of our homeschool science in the coming year.
*If you want to find out more about this set, visit LEGO Education®'s site to see all of the specifics. I think you will be VERY impressed.
Making a LEGO Balloon Car with Simple Machines
We had seen many balloon car challenges online. I presented the task to my son last week.
I showed him a picture of a balloon car. We watched a few videos.
I told him he could just use his Simple Machines set.
I told him to think about a few things:
- The car must be vertically and horizontally stable.
- The balloon needs to have enough space to inflate.
- The wheels should be protected so the balloon doesn't hit them.
This little task is harder than it looks! I believe it took well over an hour to achieve success.
It's funny, though, because he never got discouraged. It was a compulsion to make the car GO. Playing with LEGO bricks can be like that. Sometimes it's just hard to be FINISHED!
Grant was so pleased with himself (I didn't help at all!) and asked me to make a video.
As a parent I can't ask for anything more than focused learned, experimentation, and a passion to know MORE.
LEGO Education® has helped me nurture all of these in my child.
Here is the amazing news! I am giving away one of the complete Homeschool Simple Machines Pack with Printed Teacher's Guide to one lucky reader.
This is a $109.95 value!
Follow the instructions in the Rafflecopter widget below to enter.
I am a member of the LEGO Education® blogger program. I was given this product in exchange for my honest review. No other compensation was received.
Reader Comments (165)
Our 10 year old has been crazy for legos his whole life. As he moves into more engineering-based free building I try and provide as much information on the hows and whys. Legos also rocks for all kinds of math!
We started a Lego club and do a lot of great Lego learning with our friends. I use Pinterest for inspiration. Thank you for the great blog post.
We love lego's at our house, with five boys all different ages we have had tons of fun with legos... thanks for the chance to win more
I had heard about LEGO education but didn't realize there were education packs and scripts. I would love to introduce this to my boys (and girls when they are older)!
We are trying to incorporate legos more and more. Daddy is looking to teach a robotics class at work and the girls are desperately hoping to help him. The oldest qualifies for our local robotics class offered through our local college's non-credit courses but the middle one does not and would DESPERATELY love to do this at home. Thanks for the chance!!
We LOVE Legos! I have been wanting to get this set from them for a while but have been a little hesitant about wether the kids would like it. I think they will LOVE it!
We use the Legos to teach patterning and compound words
I am so excited to hear about this set!
I haven't done much with LEGOS yet. My son has mostly just explored with them. I feel it's a great critical thinking activity to work to build a specific thing. This would be awesome to win!!
My son loves LEGOs!!! He's got an engineering mind and is always creating something!
We use our Legos to create fun family time together.
We use LEGOs for Math and are planning to use your Language arts lesson plans in the fall :)
Right now we're just exploring what Legos can do!
We use LEGO for just about any subject we can work it into.
I have three Lego-loving boys, so this would be awesome!
Great giveaway Mary! Fingers crossed!
We use Legos for math, creating letters for our little to learn their letters, history, science, and storytelling. Basically, we use Legos everywhere in our school since my 4 LOVE Legos.
My husband and I have a four year old son, and while we have yet to begin formal schooling with him I know that he would LOVE using Legos as part of his curriculum. We are so excited to begin our homeschooling adventure with our children and this set would be a delightful addition to our home!
My other comment did not go through. I really this out want to try this out with the kids, it is so interesting. Where do you order yours from if I do not win?
My kids love playing with Lego and to be able to use them with lesson plans would be fantastic!
As of right now, I only use Lego blocks to keep their hands busy during read-alouds, but I've been earmarking the Lego Education catalog, trying to decide what to buy first! Would LOVE to win this! Thanks for sharing! (And love your son's grand bow!)
We are using DUPLOs to reinforce colors now and will be using them for number rods and patterning in the fall :)
We use Legos in our school day to show math concepts or reproduce history stories. Free play is also encouraged!!!
Because my son is addicted we use them all the time. We do math, reading, science, history and more using legos!
We use them a lot for our history, acting out what's going on. I haven't really used them as much in our science yet......