Fun with Legos!

The boys had a friend over for some Lego fun the other day.  Finding new things to do with them was tough as they love Legos and play with them often.  But I did manage to find a few fun ideas that they all enjoyed!

First they colored their own Lego guy...

Then they had to build the shape that matched the outline on the paper.

Vann busted his out in no time...I wasn't surprised!  Next time I will make his uber hard :)

Chayce took a little longer, but he figured it out too!  

My sweet thing :)  

Next up was some Lego Bingo!  My boys love Bingo so this was fun for them.  

Once someone got a Bingo, we played till they filled the board up. 

They're big challenge was to build a catapult.  I was excited to see what they came up with on this one!

Launching a Lego dude :)  I didn't get a picture of Chayce's catapult, but he made a cool one too!  

It was a fun time!  After these activities they had time to build whatever their little hearts desired.  I love Legos because you can use them in so many ways to encourage creativity and learning.  Hope you're having a fun day!

Gumdrop Playdate

We had a few friends over for a gumdrop/marshmallow building playdate on Wednesday.  It was a lot of fun!  

The goods!

Everyone's busy creating.

First they built 2-D shapes with marshmallows. 

Harley's turning her rectangle into a prism.

Chayce was building all kinds of shapes!

Even little Ash was into it!  

Then they started building 3-D shapes.  

The older boys :)

They had quite a few creations by the time we were done!  

She loved it!

Then we switched to gumdrops.  They found out pretty quickly that these were a lot sturdier!

One of their challenges was to build a creation that could hold a book without falling over.

They discovered that adding some support to the sides really helped keep the structure sturdy.  

I love this one that Vann created!

Yep it holds the book!  

Check out Vann's rocketship on the left...pretty cool!

She made this fun creation :)

Snacking on some popcorn and maybe a few gumdrops :)

Chaycers is reworking one of his structures.

So not only was this a lot of fun, they learned a lot too!  We talked about the vertices, edges and faces of our shapes.  We discussed why some shapes were sturdier than others and how adding additional support was very helpful.  And how when they started building taller structures this extra support was even more crucial.  Some of the boys added balancers to the bottoms of their structures so that if if tried to topple it helped to hold it up...I thought this was pretty creative.  They all did a really great job!

And the best part...getting to eat some yummy treats when they were done!  The gumdrops were their favorite and they had no trouble gobbling almost all of them up!  I still have a few boxes of unopened gumdrops left and I plan to have them build bridges next time...should be a lot of fun :)

Reading and eggs-periments

I love listening to Chayce read.  And I love that he loves it.  He's always grabbing a book and asking if he can read it to me.  Seriously, it's the 

best :)  

Speaking of books…Chayce randomly had a bloody nose the other day while reading one of his library books.  And unfortunately one drop of blood dripped on the book.  So, when we took it back I told the library and they said they'd get back to me about how much it would cost to replace the book.  Are you ready???  Twenty-one dollars!!  Yes, you read that right…$21 for a regular children's hard cover book.  And it's on the small side…it's only 8 x 7 inches.  I was shocked.  They were nice though and let us keep the damaged book so, at least we got something for that $21.  Crazy.  

He's reading a book to the girls :)

Checking out their new book…it's one of those where you have to find all the differences between two pictures.  

They like it a lot!

I hosted an eggs-periment playdate this past Friday.  We did all sorts of fun experiments with eggs.  The kids' favorite was the egg drop.  They had to keep a raw egg from breaking when it was dropped from a high spot.  They could build whatever creation they wanted with any of the materials I put on the table (felt, cotton balls, string, styrofoam, etc.)  It was pretty cool to see what they came up with and how everyone's creation was different.  And they got soooo excited if their egg didn't break!  I think only two eggs broke in all.  

All the kids making their creations to keep their eggs safe.

Vann made a parachute for his.

Getting ready to drop his egg.

His egg didn't break!

One of the mom's wanted to get even higher so, she stood on her van :)

Lego playdate

I hosted a Lego playdate on Friday.  The kiddos had a lot of fun!  I had some activities for them to do and then they had free play because they were dying to get creative and build with them.  Here are a few pics…

They colored rainbows and then sorted the Legos by color.  

Can I dump it now Mom?!

Then they sorted by shape and had to answer some questions.  

Then they built mazes.  Vann made his quite complex with levels and all kinds of fun stuff.  

Chayce's maze.  His had lots of secrets walls that move and different things you had to do to get to the end as well.  They all used their imaginations with this one.

I had planned a few more activities, but all they wanted to do at the end was build…so that's what they did.  I would definitely host another Lego playdate in the future and include some different activities.  It was a good time!  I even had time to sit down and chat with one of the mom's for quite awhile :)

The boys playing with Legos the next morning.  

Hi cute boy!

Hmm, what's this??

Chaycers working hard on creating something…