LEGO Build and Knock Down

One thing that LEGO play is NOT at our house is quiet. My kids love to build things and then they also love to knock them down. 

This week for LEGO Week we will be sharing several playful learning activities with you using LEGO and LEGO DUPLO bricks. Although our LEGO week posts are primarily for kids ages 3-5, some can by modified for younger or older kids.

Although my kids love to spend most of the day doing free building activities and just creating with LEGOs however they want, they also love coming up with silly or unique activities to try with our LEGOs... and I do too. This week we'll be sharing some of the activity ideas we came up with together.

Our first idea to share this week is a LEGO Build and Knock Down activity. 

This activity combines a few of our current favorite things... numbers, building towers, and knocking things down! My one year old LOVES to knock down the LEGO towers that my big kids build and sometimes they like to join in too. This was a fun way for everyone to play together!

Materials Needed: several handfuls of LEGO or LEGO DUPLO, notecards, markers, painters tape, and a soft ball or two.

Directions:

To start off this activity I wrote several numbers on notecards. I wrote a variety of numbers 1-10 for my 3 year old and then numbers 10-30 for my older son. Then I taped the cards to the floor using painter's tape.

Next we grabbed some soft and semi-soft balls to play with. They sat close by while we did our number build!

To begin with each kid chose a numbered notecard to start with and they built a tower to match the number on the card. For example, if the card said 3, they built a tower using 3 LEGO bricks.

After the kids built several towers they called out the number tower they wanted to knock down and threw their soft ball at it to try and knock it down.

It was pretty funny to watch the kids trying to knock down their towers and hit them just right with the balls. The thinner the tower... the harder they had to concentrate. This was really great hand eye coordination practice.

After they knocked down their towers, they rebuilt them in different ways. 

One of the main reasons why I liked this activity was that it served as a springboard for more creating. Sometimes my kids run out of ideas of things that they want to build... this semi-organized activity got them thinking differently and focused less on having their creations look exactly like they wanted them to look (a castle or a zoo or whatever) and more on counting the bricks and creatively finding ways to use the bricks they chose to make a random creation.

Note: If you don't want LEGOs crashing around your house, you could build these on top of carpet so that they are quieter when they fall... or just skip the knock down part altogether! 

If you want to include your littler kids, make sure you use LEGO DUPLO bricks since the littler LEGO brick pieces can be choking hazards. While my bigger kids build independently I will often build together with my one year old. He hands me the pieces and I add them to our creation and sometimes he adds them too. Once our creation is finished, he loves to join in with knocking things down!

Are you looking for more LEGO building activities to try? Here are a few others that are cool for 3-5 year olds.

• LEGO measuring via Playdough to Plato
• Frozen LEGOs from eLeMeNP P Kids
• 6 LEGO DUPLO Preschool Activities via No Time for Flashcards

Don't forget to head over to our LEGO Week series page to check out all of the other great LEGO posts we'll be sharing from our blogging friends this week.

You can also follow us on our Toddler Approved Facebook page and Instagram account to see the other LEGO activities that we are up to!