Saturday, April 14, 2007

LEGO people marching


LEGO people marching
Originally uploaded by toyblogging.
LEGO's are some of the most fun, expansive toys you can buy. We recently got a big box of LEGO's that span a couple of generations. Problem is, when you get these old sets there are a lot of pieces missing. The other, bigger problem, is that you get a lot of flat "base" pieces. These are the flats that come with small sets, but you can only use them as a base (they don't have the female brick side on the bottom-- it is just flat).

So if you are first introducing your kids to LEGO, after stepping up from Duplo, we recommend you strip out all those confusing ray guns, hinges, and flat pieces. Stick to blocks! The little tiny buttons are cool, but tough to build with. The long, skinny flat "connectors" are useful, but will only aggravate kids who don't yet understand how to connect things.

But if the LEGO set is a bunch of blocks? You can't go wrong. People are nice too, but our daughter spent her first round with them ripping off their heads and stacking them. Cute, but annoying, as we then had to put them all together again so none got lost!

Stick with blocks and kids will spend hours just building stuff.