LEGO School - Code breaker

 At the beginning of this school year, I decided that the "theme" of our year would be LEGO's. My son LOVES LEGO's, so this was mainly for him. But my girls enjoy playing with them just as much as he. We started off the year well, but the last few months have been lacking a little in the area of our LEGO fun. I have just had quite a bit going on and it really hasn't even crossed my mind to include it in our day. But today, I put it on our school day schedule, and the kids were THRILLED! So we brought everything to the table, and they were ready for the challenge of the day.

I started out by telling them that, for today, they were spies. The enemy had cracked all their codes, and they needed a new way to communicate. Their mission: To create a new code using LEGO bricks, and then to write a secret message with their LEGO's. They were thrilled at the challenge ahead of them! They are all really into spy stuff anyway, so this was right up their alley! Here is what they came up with.

Little Sister wanted to know if she was going to do school with the older ones. Well of course she was!! This was definitely something she could get in on. No, she didn't have to make a whole code or write something with LEGO's. She is just starting to read, so that would not have been fun for her. But, I did tell her I wanted her to take each kind of LEGO, place it on her page, draw a picture of it with her crayon, and then label it with one letter of the alphabet. I wrote all the letters on a separate sheet of paper for her to look at, so she would remember all of them. Yes, she knows all her letters, but when you're trying to remember them for something like that, sometimes little ones tend to forget some. She did exactly what I told her, and this is what she ended up with. She got about half way through the alphabet before getting tired of it. So she worked on writing her letters, matching bricks to letters, and following directions.

Little Man went for more of a graph form, so he could more easily see what bricks were to be which letter. This is his code.

I sneaked a peak at Britches while she was working. She is my more detail oriented kid, and everything has to be just right with her. She found her ruler, and before I realized it, she had a really detailed grid with all of her colors neatly labeled. She even went so far as to include capital AND lowercase letters in her code. She always goes above and beyond what I ask of her. 

So that was our LEGO school for the day - code making and code breaking. Can you figure out their code words? 

Have you done any really cool LEGO challenges with your kids? If so, tell me about them. I'd love to try out YOUR ideas! And if you have never done "LEGO school" with your kids, I encourage you to give it a try. You will be amazed at the things your kids will learn from a simple "toy" such as LEGO bricks!