When you think of LEGO bricks and Legoland, you think of toys and playtime, right? Right. But LEGO bricks are so much more than a toy. Children gain a lot of knowledge about the world around them when they play with LEGO bricks.
A visit to Legoland is always fun, but it can also help you focus your child on building if you have ventured too much into screen time. Many people get lured into “educational video games” and forget all about the box of LEGO bricks they have in the corner of the play room. I say it is time to give LEGO bricks another chance. Your child will find the joy of building and story telling all over again.
I have always wanted to take my children to the closest Legoland to us, which is in Florida. We never made it. Instead, we visited the Legoland Discovery Centery in Atlanta. It was great, but small and, well, just a Discovery Center.
When I realized that we would be in Sweden for 23 days, I knew we should be able to make it to the original Legoland in Billund, Denmark, where the LEGO Group got started. Ole Kirk Christiansen, a carpenter and toy maker, realized his biggest success were interlocking wooden blocks. As he perfected his product, with help from his four sons who played with the blocks, plastics were becoming more available. This was happening in the 1930s and 1940s. The LEGO brick went from wood to plastic and the world was never the same.
Today, LEGO is the world’s most powerful brand. The company’s motto, created by Christiansen, is “The best is never too good.” He encouraged his employees not to skimp on quality. I wonder what would happen in my homeschool if I took that as my motto.
I am not talking about perfectionism here. Just an insistence on quality. Quality time with the children when they need me, quality books, quality curriculum, quality meals etc. In our quest to “do it all,” I fear that we skimp on quality just so we can get the quantity done.
I don’t know how that applies in your homeschool, but I have a pretty good idea how that translates for mine. And that, my friends, is why we travel. So that when we come back, we can see our lives in a new light, and challenge ourselves to go to the next level.
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