My 4 year old has just started playing with LEGO. As much as I loathe the whole pink LEGO and pink everything that is marketed to girls when she asked for this set there was no way I was saying no. I love LEGO and all the learning opportunities inside each box, especially the fine motor skill development which is a building block for writing. I was telling my 7 year old about doing some LEGO challenges when my daughter asked if she could do some. Of course! That said she hasn’t had much practice with the little blocks yet so I set this easy LEGO challenge up for her and she breezed through it… at her urging I made it harder and we did a totally of 3 trays full of mini challenges. The next day she asked for even harder ones. That’s my girl!
Gather your materials. I am using plain old LEGO blocks and an ice tray. This lets me keep the individual challenges organized without too much prep. There are some seriously cool Lego challenge tutorials out there… this one isn’t as polished but as long as you have Lego block you can do it NOW. 
Start by creating simple structures. I grab the pieces I need first in duplicate and then create the structures popping the duplicate bricks into one section of the ice tray and the completed structure in the other. 
The first challenge was simple and she breezed through all four quickly. 
So we made more… 
and more… 
These were our most complicated ones and as you can see she had to concentrate. 
If your child is breezing through all of these don’t give them the duplicate pieces separated out. Put all of them in a small bowl or container. I wouldn’t expect my child to dig through thousands of Legos without getting frustrated but it’s a logical next step for this activity to combine the loose pieces and add in a new step. 
What I like about these little challenges is that she is still just starting out with Lego and this is giving her bite sized models to recreate while she works on some seriously rad fine motor skills. Being able to manipulate the models in her hands make all the difference.
Lindsay says
I posted this activity a few months back. The kids love it and I think it is such a great fine motor skill for them. It is also great to be able to do different things with Legos for the little kids who aren’t ready to put an entire set together. Fun activity.
Susen says
My daughter is also 4 and we have some ‘girlie’colored Legos we picked up from yard sales not to mention the thousands of other Lego pieces from my 8 year old son! We have played a bit with Legos with my daughter but now after reading your post I am going to give it a whirl!
patty says
love this idea. my boy and girl twins will love the challenge. i also dislike the pink legos.
thanks for the great ideas.
p
RD says
Thank you for sharing this idea. One of mine is new to Legos. We went through all the building ideas that came with her little set of bricks, and we tried making some things on our own, but my daughter (at least for now) prefers seeing a model and copying it. It never occurred to me to build something for her and let her copy it, even if it doesn’t really resemble an actual object we can both identify.