Minecraft LEGO Advent Calendar

The past few years I have purchased the LEGO City Advent Calendar, which is great fun for kids. Since I only have two kids, they would alternate days opening the calendar. This year we have a tighter budget, so I decided I would make my own Christmas countdown calendar this year - A LEGO Minecraft Advent calender!

 

My kids (and probably yours, too!) are obsessed with Minecraft. There is evidence of this all over the house, including on display in the living room:

I figured the least I could do was donate two muffin tins, some LEGOs, and a few hours to create a homemade Minecraft Advent calendar! First, I cut out 3 inch squares out of card stock. Then, I punched circles with the leftover card stock, wrote the numbers on the circles, and glued them on to the squares.

The bulk of time came in designing the LEGO Minecraft miniatures that would fit (in pieces) into the muffin holes. Since my kids are obsessed with the swords and pickaxes, I am going to fill up most of the holes with various combinations (both ones you can build in Minecraft and others that you can't).

For the sword (from top to bottom), I used 4 1x1 bricks, a 1x2 plate with 1 stud, a 1x4 plate, and 2 1x1 cylinders.
For the pickaxe (from top to bottom), I used a 1x2 tile, a 1x4 plate, 2 1x2 plates, and 3 1x1 cylinders.
 
Here are a few of the 20-something swords and pickaxes I put together, along with a furnace my husband made:

That pickaxe on the right has an obsidian handle (black LEGOs) and redstone (red LEGOs) for the axe part. Other colors to use: blue for diamond, yellow for gold, brown for oak, tan for birch, gray for stone/iron. With all the color combinations, you could easily fill your calendar with only swords and pickaxes! It is fun to include some other items, such as the furnace, or blocks (just throw in a bunch of green/brown or gray/black pieces), or a creeper face (shown at the top). I have been photographing each miniature LEGO piece and am going to print them out tomorrow to glue to the back of each red or green card stock square. I will then take apart each LEGO creation and place it into a muffin tin hole, and either hot glue or tape the squares to the muffin tins. Here are some of the blocks I've included:

Clockwise from top left: gold, redstone, bedrock, diamond.

Feel free to include traditional Christmas items as well, such as a Christmas tree, a sleigh, presents, a wreath, etc. Here are a few presents:

You can get tons of ideas by looking at the contents of previous years' calendars:

The beauty of this project is that you can use what you have on hand. If you don't have a lot of LEGOs, but have a color printer, search for "printable minecraft block" in Google image search and instead make a Minecraft papercraft calendar! If you do this project, I'd love to see the pieces you've created - feel free to link up your own blog posts in the comments below.

Chocolate or Candy LEGO Valentine's Day Treats

Yummy Homemade LEGO Valentine's Day Treats

One of my kids detests chocolate. Though I know chocolate is a traditional Valentine's Day treat, I decided we would make white chocolate treats this year. Since both my kids love LEGOs, and I already had a minifigure mold from a LEGO-themed birthday party, this Valentine card seemed like a no-brainer!

Make Your Own LEGO Valentine's Treats

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What you need:

• LEGO figure mold (I used the LEGO Minifigure Ice Cube Tray (aff link)
• scissors, string, single hole punch, 2.5" hole punch (or you can cut out the circles)
• chocolate, white chocolate, or candy melts
• small bags to put the finished product in
• template (below, or download the pdf, or feel free to make your own!) - these would also be cute cupcake toppers!

Template: background graphics from www.mycutegraphics.com

Melt white chocolates in the microwave in a glass bowl/measuring cup, an pour into the mold.

After the minifigs cool (you can refrigerate to speed up the process), gather your supplies.

Punch out the circles and then punch two small holes in each circle.

Loop the string through the holes and tie to secure the LEGO minifigure.

Sign the back, place in a poly bag. Done!

Flag Fun with LEGOs!

Build Flags of the World with LEGOs

My kiddo year old disappeared for awhile yesterday afternoon. I heard the sound of  LEGO digging, and when he emerged, he had made two flags out of LEGOs. We had just started tracking the Olympic medals in the morning, and he ran with the theme to create some adorable LEGO flags! He started with 5, but I had a feeling I would be seeing more of these over the next few weeks.

What is so great about these LEGO flags is that they can be really simple to make (see the flags on the left in the image below)! You can also get a little more creative and complicated, as with the ones above. Hopefully you can catch the details if you want to duplicate our flag designs.

This is especially fun to do while the Olympics are going on, but really any time you are learning about different countries around the world. Which flags would be the hardest to make with LEGOs? See what your kids come up with!

LEGO Pro tip - try buying LEGOs in bulk, either locally from craigslist or a similar-type Facebook group, or shop online at shopgoodwill.com and try to wait for a good deal. You'll have to wash and sort them (this can take awhile), but it's always been worth it for us. I aim for $5-7/pound but if you can tell there are a lot of good pieces in there, it might be worth more.

Looking for more LEGO activities or tips? Click below to go to

LEGO Tips and Activities

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoyed this LEGO geography activity!

Turn this activity into a learning opportunity

If you want to give this activity a more structured feel or use it in a classroom, I hope you will consider this resource I put together. Not only do students learn about another country and culture, they need to use critical thinking skills to create the flags. There are 36 flags and countries highlighted, though you can always create your own with this STEM Mats Activity for Flags:

LEGO Workshop with Play-Well!

This morning we had the opportunity to host a LEGO® workshop with Play-Well TEKnologies in our very own homeschool! Several local homeschooling families joined us and the kids got to build lego cars with gears and motors.

First, our instructor Krista, gathered everyone together and they all listened to the rules about respecting each other, helping each other, and how everyone would pitch in to clean up at the end. They also talked about engineers and what they do. If only I could captivate my kids' attention this well:

The kids needed to find similar wheels, mount their motors and gears, and learn how to control the motors to drive their cars. One of the rules was that no parents could help, which was a nice break for the parents and also encouraged peer collaboration and teamwork! Oooooooh...look at all those gears!

 Everyone got to personalize their vehicle with various decoration pieces and there was a lot of variation in both size and style of the cars.

A goal was set, design was carried out, and testing was performed. We had a vehicle ramp from a previous lego birthday party (for non-motorized cars), so instead of driving the cars down the ramp, the kids tested out their creations by driving their cars up the ramp. What a fun time!

Do you want to host LEGO-inspired engineering classes, camp, or even a birthday party? Visit Play-Well's website for details. They are in 25 states, and my oldest son had great fun at LEGO camp a couple of summers ago:

 

LEGO Americana Roadshow

Shel at One Sweet World had posted a few days ago about going to see this amazing exhibit at a local mall, and since my kids also love LEGOs, and we have been watching Schoolhouse Rock's "I'm Just a Bill" all week, I knew we had to go! What an amazing exhibit! Here is a collage of some of the highlights of our trip:

The Art of the Brick is also in town, but is on the pricy side for tickets. I'd love to go as a family, but between the cost of tickets and parking in Boston, and the fact that my boys are rarely happy to stay in one place for more than 90-120 minutes, I just don't know if I can justify the price! This wonderful LEGO Americana exhibit is not only educational, but free! I am planning on taking out books on some of the buildings when we next visit the library.

From the site:

This one of a kind experience will celebrate and honor the history of the United States through iconic buildings and architectural structures, all of which are made entirely of LEGO® bricks. Attendees will be able to see famous landmarks such as the White House, US Capitol Building, Old North Church, Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument reconstructed in incredible detail by LEGO® master builders.

LEGO tip of the day!

My son is rebuilding his LEGO Tower Bridge and it reminded me of how useful this tip has been in our lives, so I thought I would share it with you (though I'm guessing I have before). This chip and dip tray I got from a Target bin years ago has been so incredibly useful to us over the years! Save your sanity by keeping all of the pieces sorted while building a set. This is particularly useful when building a large set that might take days to complete.

We use this tray for fine motor sorting as well. Do you have any LEGO tips that have made your life easier? I will try to share some more of ours as well over the next few weeks. Find other LEGO ideas here.

LEGO Pull-back Racers Hands-on Engineering Fun!

I have seen a few of these pull-back racers pop up on Pinterest from time to time, from amazing bloggers like Frugal Fun 4 Boys and these various rubber band racers, but I thought we could take it one step further and make it more of an engineering activity.

Building the racer was likely the least exciting part of this activity! I gathered several different rubber bands. Try varying the size as well as the thickness. We used a tape measure and counted how many times we wound the rubber band to see which rubber band worked best!

With each rubber band, we wound it around the rear axle 3, 4, and 5 times, and then measured how far it went each time. Before starting a new rubber band, I had my kids guess whether it would work better, and make the car go further, or if it wouldn't work as well.

This activity was so much fun. After using the car, they made several more based on what they thought would make the car work better (different wheels, different style of car, etc.). I am sure we will be doing this one again! I think you will enjoy this one, too, so I'm linking up with Teachers are Terrific in today's What is going on in your science class linky!

Be sure to head over and check out more science ideas!

LEGO Coordinates Game!

This is a quick and fun game to play with your LEGO lovers! It is also a great way to introduce the concept of coordinates.

What you need:

• 15-20 of the same piece per color (we chose square)
• Printable game board (download the pdf file or print the image below)
• Dice, 2 (I used small wooden cubes): Label one with the letters A-F, and the other 1-6

Rules of play:

Roll the dice. Find the coordinate and place a brick in that square.
Get 4 in a row first to win (3 in a row for younger kids)! The pieces can be across, up and down, or diagonal. If you roll a coordinate you already rolled, skip your turn (or roll again, you decide which rules you like better).
The thing I love about this game is that if a space is occupied, you can just stack your piece on the piece that is already there! Red just won in the picture below:

Getting started.

Thanks to Kimberly Geswein for the font!

STEM Tale - Fairy Tale Activity for Beauty and the Beast

Fairy Tale STEM Activity for Beauty and the Beast

Belle loves to read but she needs a book stand. Why? Her hands are tied up helping the beast tame his mane! 

Materials Needed for this STEM Fairy Tale Activity

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• cardboard boxes, recyclables, tape 
• (optional) building bricks and plates (this pack is LEGO-compatible)
• books to test in the book stand

Watch a Video Preview of Beauty and the Beast STEM

Before Getting Started with the Fairy Tale STEM Activity

STEM tales work best if you read the original fairy tale first or do your own storytelling. Discuss the similarities and differences as you read through the story. Since many of the kids have likely seen a movie of this fairy tale, you can also contrast and compare the movie to the story.

Fairy Tale STEM with the Engineering Design Process 

I have designed STEM tales so that as students read the story, they will follow the engineering design process. What is the problem that needs to be solved in the Beauty and the Beast STEM Tale? Beauty needs a book stand. You can provide a variety of books for the students to pick from.

Design a Book Stand in this Fairy Tale STEM Challenge

After brainstorming book stand design ideas, the students will then choose one to create. They will need to take measurements and then test out the book stand to make sure it holds the book. Once they have a working design, they can test it out with other books. For example, the design below will work for a narrow range of books. If the book is too long, it won't fit (or the words will be obscured).

The stand above holds the book at the top and bottom of the book. Here is another design that supports the book at the sides:

The design above will work for books of a different length/height, but what if they are too wide? This one can actually be adjusted for width to some degree.

Growth Mindset and STEM

STEM tales are a great way to foster teamwork and problem-solving. They are also the perfect way to model a growth mindset. It is rare for an engineering design to work perfectly on the first attempt, so students will likely experience failure at some point. In improving the designs and working together, they will work through the issues and solve the problem.

To find the full resource, which includes an 8-page booklet, check list for self-evaluation, and tips, visit this link:

Pin the idea for later:

To read more about how to conduct a STEM challenge, visit this post:

To see all posts in this series, click here:

Week in Review: 6 Sept 2014

Some of the things we did this week (top to bottom): Farm school, magnets, LEGO marble mazes, sound offices, Walden Pond, Draw Write Now, garden harvesting, chess tournament, Minecraft!