Legos: The Building Blocks of Math

Believe it or not, having a bunch of Legos all over the floor can help your younger child develop important math skills. These colorful building blocks can boost your child’s confidence in math at an early age. Here are great ways to use Legos to foster a love for math in your young child: 🧩

Counting! For the very young child, simply counting these blocks is a great way to introduce them to the numbers they will be using for the rest of their lives. 🔢
Recognizing patterns – Use the various colored blocks to help your child recognize patterns in sequence. :sparkles:
Place Value – Have your child make a stack of Legos that is 10 bricks high. Have them make a few of these stacks and set aside a handful of loose Lego bricks. Use the stacks to represent the “tens” and the loose bricks to represent the “ones” when learning place value. 💡
By pulling Legos out of a bag, your child can collect data on how many Legos of each color there are and use that information to plot data on a graph. 📊
By placing Legos on graph paper and having the student trace around the Lego, you can help them begin to understand the concepts of area and perimeter. Counting the number of squares on the graph paper that the Lego occupied helps the student visualize the area taken up by an object.
One creative way to explore estimation and measurement is by playing a game of “How many Legos does it weigh?” Tie two pieces of string to a hanger and hang it on a doorknob. Make a list of small, common household objects that you’ll measure. Tie the small object (e.g., your child’s shoe, a stuffed animal, a water bottle) to one of the strings and tie a Lego “base” to the other string. Your child will guess how many Legos to add to the base to balance the object. This is a fun way to use estimation and trial and error to have fun with math! 🎲

Have fun experimenting with different ways to use these fun, colorful, and kid-friendly blocks to introduce your child to new math concepts. Just try not to step on them when you’re done! 😄