Watch any kid playing with one of the worlds favorite toys, and they soon go off-course.
Does an app like Brickit dull these creative urges?
Or is there more to it?
Ravi Palwe / Unsplash
“LEGO is a great way to advance a child’s developmental abilities through play.
LEGO develops fine motor, visual motor, bilateral coordination, and visual perceptual abilities.
Visual perception is the ability to receive, process, and interpret visual information.
Brickit
These abilities are important for academic tasks such as handwriting, reading, spelling, and math.
They are also important in real-life tasks such as driving,” says Schwartz.
Some Direction Is Good
Undirected play leads to all kinds of imaginative fun.
F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab
But directed play also can be valuable, and not just for learning how to follow instructions.
“Kids who own multiple sets of LEGO will likely just toss the bricks after playing their fill.”
An app like Brickit can lead a kid to reevaluate their box of bricks.
“It can rekindle their passion and investigative spirit, gently nudging them towards a repurposing of sorts.
It all comes down to context.
Its a way to use the seemingly unstoppable appeal of apps as a path back to real-world play.
And project-based open-endedness is a pillar of learning and education.”
Universal Toys
Brickit isnt the first attempt to bring those old LEGOs back to life.
Lab and Sy-Lab
One surprise is just how many construction toys exist.
The kit lets you interconnect parts from “LEGO,Duplo,Fischertechnik,Gears!
Gears!,KNex,Krinkles,Bristle Blocks,Lincoln Logs,Tinkertoys,Zome, andZoob.”
Most kids attempt to marry parts from different toys at some point.
The difference here is that its easier, and the likelihood of separating those parts again is much higher.
The Free Universal Construction Kit seems better than Brickit in terms of encouraging kids to use their imagination.
