Recently my mom has been going through all her old homeschooling magazines and throwing ones not needed anymore. While sorting, she found this part of an article in a 1993 issue of Growing Without Schooling, 'Watching Children Learn.' I have copied the relevent section here word for word, obmitting nothing, not even correcting the 'LEGO' mispellings.
Working With Legos
Natalie Mortensen (WA) wrote:
Kellen gets up at 6:30 Am, snaps the light on, and plops down on the floor in front of his pile of Legos. Once in a while he'll build directly from various diagrams of sets, but mostly he's off on his own design, complete with ceaseless running commentary, punctuated with sound effects of guns, when appropiate, or blood-curdling yells, as another man has walked the plank, or been unseated in a joust.
"Do you want yogurt and granola for breakfast?" I call from the kitchen. After several unsuccessful attempts at trying to pry an answer out of him, I sigh, and put the bowl down in his place. He'll eat it sometime.
Kellen, now 6, first started working seriously (as opposed to "playing - thank you Nancy Wallace) with Legos at about 5 1/2. This was his first real area of daily focus, and he has continued to build with Legos for up to four hours per day. At first, even though we had homeschooled out daughter for six years, my old school head still got in the way, and the worrying wheels began to turn. He used to like to draw, I reasoned, or remember when we sang at the piano? His little brother Tristan distracted him into playing active imaginary games sometimes, but basically all he wanted to do was sit, hunched over, building and muttering to himself.
He still asked to read, however, and one day I read him a well-illustrated version of Robin Hood. He loved it, and immediately began incorperating these stories with his Lego work. Sherwood Forest was constructed, complete with little forest figures. These creations spilled over into the woods, in which I, as Sheriff of Nottingham, was pursued for days on end by Robin Hood and Little John. (Why do I always have to be the bad guy?)
Now we're on to castles, pirates, Vikings and explorers, and he's begining slowly to piece together questions such as, "Was King Arthur before of after Richard the Lionhearted?" or "Were there pirates at the time of the American Revolution?"
His excitement is infectious when we are trying to discover whether the "Adventure Galley had been a "good guy" ship before it was taken over by Captain Kidd. (The Time-Life series The Seafarers helped with our serch) Back to the Legos he goes to build a pirate ship. Tristan, 3, becomes heartily infected to.
I usually shy away from popular toys, and I used to put Legos in this catagory. But now I see how effectively and tanibly Kellen works with them, in order to concretize his imagination. They are, simply, an extension of himself abd his learning process. As he said the other day, "I need Legos." And so he does.
Brings back the good ole memories, doesn't it?
Little Kellen would be about 17 now...I wonder if he found his way to any LEGO fan websites?
