play with legos - until how old?

[Anonymous]

I have an 8yo and a 3yo, and for most of the past year, it has been ALL legos ALL the time. Over the past month it has begun to shift a little - Monsunos are in now, as are other toys that span both kids. I'm curious to see if they revivie again because I know the older kids we encounter still seem to love their legos. Fwiw, my older son is less interested in the building than in having extensive imaginary battles etc etc. For that reason we have used smaller bins for the little lego men and weapons that get accessed more frequently. I tried to keep some of the sets together as the PP said, but it gets really hard once you have a lot of them (and if you have a 3yo with destructive tendencies nearby.) We use the Ikea Stuva system for toy storage and love it - you can configure it with drawers and shelving (but doors, so you don't have to look at the bins unless you want to!) We use smaller plastic or fabric bins inside.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?query=stuva
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20163265/

[Anonymous]

I have 4.5 and 7 year old boys that are Lego fanatics. They have been putting things together way past the age on the box.

Here's my dilema--I can store the pieces and minifigures just fine in the big lego bins or rubbermaid. My problem is the assembled kits--the giant starwars ships like the millenium falcon and bounty hunters, the giant harry potter castle, the superhero batcave, the HUGE minifigure prison, etc. These things can't be fit in bins--they are tall and bulky. Once one of these falls apart it is doomed. Right now- in my 7 year olds room we have a couple low bookshelves which store the assembled figures--and the top of the bookcase is for teh very big ones. Little ones top dresser is covered in the big sets.

I have a ton of great storage shelves with the slanted buckets in the rec room-but these are no good for assembled sets. I am thinking large table--etc.

I do need to get rid of old toys since Legos are the primary draw. They play with nothing else. They want nothing else for bday or xmas--not even electronic games. They do a good mix of creating their own things while also playing with assembled kits.

I have saved all instructions in one huge bag and I make a habit of keeping all mini-figures from same collections, e.g,. starwars, superheros, monster fighters, in the different labled clear gallon ziploc bags. We put them in there the night before my cleaning lady comes. It is a logistical nightmare that has to be kept on top of all times

I am open to all suggestions.

[ThatSmileyFaceGuy]

For the big kits with specialized peices we use the big 2.5 gallon ziplock bags and everything goes in them. Smaller kits with just regular peices and bulk bricks are in smaller tubs with those instructions are in thier own bag.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have 4.5 and 7 year old boys that are Lego fanatics. They have been putting things together way past the age on the box.

Here's my dilema--I can store the pieces and minifigures just fine in the big lego bins or rubbermaid. My problem is the assembled kits--the giant starwars ships like the millenium falcon and bounty hunters, the giant harry potter castle, the superhero batcave, the HUGE minifigure prison, etc. These things can't be fit in bins--they are tall and bulky. Once one of these falls apart it is doomed. Right now- in my 7 year olds room we have a couple low bookshelves which store the assembled figures--and the top of the bookcase is for teh very big ones. Little ones top dresser is covered in the big sets.

I have a ton of great storage shelves with the slanted buckets in the rec room-but these are no good for assembled sets. I am thinking large table--etc.

I do need to get rid of old toys since Legos are the primary draw. They play with nothing else. They want nothing else for bday or xmas--not even electronic games. They do a good mix of creating their own things while also playing with assembled kits.

I have saved all instructions in one huge bag and I make a habit of keeping all mini-figures from same collections, e.g,. starwars, superheros, monster fighters, in the different labled clear gallon ziploc bags. We put them in there the night before my cleaning lady comes. It is a logistical nightmare that has to be kept on top of all times

I am open to all suggestions.

I totally agree with you on this. I have two boys (7 and 5) and since their birthdays 6 months ago, all they want is Lego. It has taken over our playroom and I don't even have the cleaning people in there anymore because it is ALL over the floor. Every week or so we clean it up, but they are so particular about where certain pieces go that I feel like I can't even help. I agree that I probably need to get rid of pretty much everything else in the playroom, as it only gets looked at occasionally these days. I am already dreading Christmas.

[Anonymous]

This is Op. To the prior few posters, it sounds like your kids leave the lego sets, once assembled, intact, yes? That is very cool, and I would just display them on various shelves in that case. My kids deconstruct the sets after playing with the assembled versions for a week or two (even big ones like Harry Potter, Star Wars) - so then we just toss the pieces in with the gazillion other legos and then we have gazillion plus 500 pieces. I do save the manuals in case they ever want to reconstruct, but it's highly doubtful they will ever do so, they tend to just "create" with the pieces after assembling a kit. Hence my thought about the ikea trofast - since the drawers are relatively shallow, my thought is we can sort yellow pieces into one drawer, blue into another, and so on. Still not sure if this is a good idea but it seems like there are many different lego storage ideas and I guess I just need to try one to see if it works for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is Op. To the prior few posters, it sounds like your kids leave the lego sets, once assembled, intact, yes? That is very cool, and I would just display them on various shelves in that case. My kids deconstruct the sets after playing with the assembled versions for a week or two (even big ones like Harry Potter, Star Wars) - so then we just toss the pieces in with the gazillion other legos and then we have gazillion plus 500 pieces. I do save the manuals in case they ever want to reconstruct, but it's highly doubtful they will ever do so, they tend to just "create" with the pieces after assembling a kit. Hence my thought about the ikea trofast - since the drawers are relatively shallow, my thought is we can sort yellow pieces into one drawer, blue into another, and so on. Still not sure if this is a good idea but it seems like there are many different lego storage ideas and I guess I just need to try one to see if it works for us.

I can promise you, they will never stay sorted. Plus "by color" isn't the way to go. I have a bunch of bins from container store (clear) more than you can imagine. A sick amount, in fact...

[Anonymous]

We keep the minifigures and their accessories in a smaller bin separate from the regular Lego pieces.

Mixed Legos go in a big, shallow, clear bin.

Expensive complete sets and special creations go on shelves mounted to the wall. We use metal brackets spray painted to coordinate with their room, and had clear acrylic cut at Home Depot for the shelves (at different heights out of reach of the little one, and clear so the kids can still see their creations from the floor).

A family member recommends sorting/storing bricks according to shape and type instead of color (studs, plates, wings, roof tiles, wheels, hinges, etc.). She swears that the pieces make less of a mess that way because the kids look for a certain type of brick when they are building, not a certain color.

[Anonymous]

We hang completed ones from bedroom ceilings using plastic string - at least the ones that took the longest to build. We keep all of the manuals and then they have to get creative to re-build. We wish we had the time to sort by color, shape, style etc as that would be much easier to find the pieces we need ....but it never happens. My DH purchased a plastic chest you would use for nuts, bolts, nails etc. We use that for the smallest pieces - in most case we can keep like pieces together but it just gets overwhelming. In reality all the boys in my house love playing and building with them so much that they have created some pretty cool designs from all the parts - they don't seem to mind so much that they can't rebuild some of the kits. Maybe I care more and eventually I guess if we ever wanted to sell anything we'd have to be better organized but until then they love them and as long as they aren't on my floor to step on we just collect in zip lock bags and put into a large bin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We keep the minifigures and their accessories in a smaller bin separate from the regular Lego pieces.

Mixed Legos go in a big, shallow, clear bin.

Expensive complete sets and special creations go on shelves mounted to the wall. We use metal brackets spray painted to coordinate with their room, and had clear acrylic cut at Home Depot for the shelves (at different heights out of reach of the little one, and clear so the kids can still see their creations from the floor).

A family member recommends sorting/storing bricks according to shape and type instead of color (studs, plates, wings, roof tiles, wheels, hinges, etc.). She swears that the pieces make less of a mess that way because the kids look for a certain type of brick when they are building, not a certain color.

I agree, sorting by shape and type makes much more sense when you are looking for pieces to a kit. We also store lego figurines separately and use the IKEA containers for the rest

[Anonymous]

Thank your lucky stars - LEGOS are very seriously one of the activities that correlate with performance at school......they may be a mess but there is no better way for your kids to be spending their time and having fun - think beyond the mess - think positive - you have some wonderfully creative kids!