Just when I thought I was mastering this parenting thing...I need a lego philosophy?

Anonymous wrote:My house has 2 huge bins of legos. My house also has a bunch of sets that I have hidden from my 6 yr old because he is not old enough to put them together. Should I just let him do his best with the sets (10-25$ sets, not really expensive and all gifts) or wait till he gest older so he has some actual sets?

For those of you who keep them all organized, do you do it, or your child? Did you make a system that your child follows? If yes, what age?

He just found one of the little hidden sets and I was pleased that he put it together and thought maybe he's about old enough. I was also impressed with the little set of vehichicles that he made and thought he could learn fromputting actual sets together but he's also already having fun.

Yes, I'm over thinking this.

6 YO can do most lego sets. Are you just hording sets? What are you waiting for?

6 yr old has a few smaller kits that he did himself (he places them in a container so they don't get broken) and just did a 600+ kit he got for Xmas by himself as well. We also have a big container of non-kit lego bricks, a container with mini-figs, and one for vehicle pieces (he requested they be separate). He adds to and removes bricks from the kit pieces all the time and will use the non-kit bricks to build pieces that go with the other structures.
I have all of the booklets in a binder in case we need them.
My only rule is that pieces are put away or off the floor once he's done.

My Lego philosophy is don't leave them on the floor for me to step on.

I have two kids who play with Legos very differently. The older one likes to build the elaborate sets and save them fully built (has a table to play with them on), and extra pieces go in a bin. The younger one mostly just likes to build for fun, so the majority of his Legos are in bins. He has started to leave a few sets built and those are on a table too.

My son prefers kits, but does free play. They are stored in Lego-shaped containers by theme and if he wants to rebuild something, instruction booklets are in binders, by theme.

Most 6 year olds should be able to do these small sets by themselves. Both of mine were, at 3.5-4 years of age, following the instructions. And if he doesn't enjoy following the instructions, he'll be creative, even better! At 8 yrs old, say, these small sets will be way too easy, so open them now.

We tried to keep the Lego sets separate at first, would put them in a Ziploc back in the box with the instructions, but after awhile...they mostly merged into couple of large bins. I do think the kids get frustrated when they try to recreate a castle and there are way more bricks than they need and you have to dig. But I had to clean them up too many times. Also you don't want to be all "Lord Business" about it.
I like the "check out" system pp describes. We are tight on shelf space though.

My lego philosophy is this -- if you leave a piece out and I step on it, I'll yell at you.

My kids are in charge of their stuff. If they want to keep it sorted out in sets, then I let them do that -- but I'm not implementing a system for them or harassing them to clean up according to a set of rules, or worse, cleaning up for them.

A simple way to keep the sets together would be in large ziploc bags. Simpler still to keep them in their original boxes, but that takes up more room.

I would expect that for new sets, the kids may be more interested in keeping them separate from the vast lego collection, but that over time, they become more pieces in general lego bins.

Anonymous wrote:These sets are designed so that you open one bag at a time. I don't know why there'd be 1000s of pieces out if the set was first being built.

Sorry -- wrong Lego thread!

My kids are too young for a "philosophy", but I'll tell you how I played with them. And if it matters, I have advanced degrees in physics and engineering. I built with Legos through high school.

With kits, the first time around I built to the instruction. Second, I built the other things pictured on the box which usually didn't have instructions. Third, integrated kits with other Legos. I think, much like learning calculus or laws of physics, the initial passes allowed me to learn how to build certain types of structures or pieces of structures that I could incorporate into other "free build" ideas. The kits also gave me some specialty pieces which at the time would not have been available since there was no Lego store.

DD, 3, has received some Duplo kits and also bins of Duplos (hand-me-downs and purchased from craigslist). At this point she just mixes everything together, and I'm find with that. She'll pull out her Lightening McQueen pieces and mix and match them for a while with her zoo pieces. But mostly she just likes building structures as high as possible.

These sets are designed so that you open one bag at a time. I don't know why there'd be 1000s of pieces out if the set was first being built.

Unless a toy cost $100+, I don't make any non safety-related rules for how my kids can use it.

I would let the kid have whatever fairly inexpensive sets he seems interested in, and put them together to the best of his ability or mess around and create something from scratch depending on what he wants to do. I tend to be pretty hands-off and encourage free play with few defined rules (other than polite manners and sensible safety precautions).

My youngest DD is 5 years old and I mostly expect her to keep her own toys picked up, but I have shown her how and created a fairly easy to organize play area with bins and stuff she can use herself, and I sometimes supervise the tidying process to keep her on track and prevent her from getting overwhelmed by a huge mess.

I think you are a bit too cautious with these sets. I think a 6 year old should be able to put together a 15-25 dollar set with minimum help. I think only truly big set needs special treatment to keep them intact.

Anonymous wrote:Is it that difficult to sift through a bin of legos if you have directions to find the right pieces for a kit again?

This sounds so awful. It sucks enough searching through the 1000 Legos in the kit for the right piece, searching through 10000 Legos for one tiny thing that may have actually been sucked up by the vacuum sounds like hell.