A few weeks ago, I wrote about our frustration when we went out to buy some LEGO and couldn’t find a single box of LEGO that wasn’t themed.
It’s not that we don’t love the licensed sets of LEGO – sometimes we do – but, inspired by the LEGO movie, Flea wanted to build her own LEGO creation, to not just follow instructions, but to use her imagination to create something amazing.
Thankfully, the rather brilliant people at LEGO saw my post and sent Flea a huge box of LEGO bricks. She was a bit pleased.
The photo at the top of this post is Flea’s LEGO mansion, complete with a not-entirely-to-scale LEGO basketball field (not seen) and a swimming pool, complete with diving board. There’s also a double-decker throne, and a widescreen TV. My kid dreams BIG. It’s not quite finished yet, but I already think it’s brilliant.
Flea’s probably as proud of this as she has been of the various Chima, Harry Potter and other sets we’ve assembled, and these days, she can sit absorbed for an entire evening, just inventing her own LEGO creations.
When we were struggling to find LEGO, I wondered if other families loved making LEGO creations from scratch as much as we do.
Some of my favourite bloggers shared pictures of their own LEGO makers’ creations with me. And they’re fantastic, aren’t they? I got way too many LEGO creations to include in one post, so I think I’ll do another round-up of Flea’s creations from our new set and I’m happy to include creations from other blogger kids – if you’d like to share a pic of a great LEGO creation, I’d love to feature it – just email me a nice picture with your blog name so I can credit you!
So – if our kids are so great at being little LEGO makers, why is it so hard to find these sort of LEGO sets? Come on retailers, please can we start seeing more of these sets in mainstream toy stores, rather than having to hunt them down or buy them direct?
With thanks to (1) Seasider in the City (2) Mum in the Madhouse (3) The Brick Castle (4) Fashion Mommy (5) The Brick Castle (6) RedPeffer (7) VeViVos (8) Raisie Bay (9) In the Playroom
Totally agree. That’s what LEGO used to be all about – creating your own designs. Now it’s just like a 3D jigsaw puzzle.
I love the creativity of free LEGO play. It’s what mornings were invented for!
While I agree that creative building is GREAT, I also love building sets and following the instructions. Have you SEEN some fo the amazing designs out there? When you start out it is very hard to build without instructions. The number of amazing building techniques I have learned through building sets. I remember when I built my first set again as an adult, I was just thinking this is an engineering marvel! lol. I guess it would be like knitting without a pattern or cooking without a recipe. Some people are better than others at doing that, but if you want to be great, you have to learn the basics.
Thanks for including ours. Love Flea’s mansion, it reminds me of the Lego creations me and my sister used to make
My brothers and I used to make a lot of LEGO houses, it was great to see Flea doing the same 🙂 Flea loved your space shuttle, too!
Thanks for using our picture. Joe loves creating with lego, and this is real use of imagination, not just following instructions.
Joe’s model was fantastic! I agree completely, LEGO is a fantastic toy for imagination 🙂
Mansions are the best! We don’t actually have many sets ( I think the girls had one each last year) but what we do have is a huge box of bricks that we have been collecting for 20+ years. The Little Man is not yet 4 (the recommended age) but he’s given up his duplo and loves the lego box already. Thanks for including our house the girls had loads of fun building that together.
Wow – 20 years worth of LEGO?? That’s mind blowing. Am completely jealous.
Thanks for including our design Sally. I love that mansion that Flea built – Grace is apparently doing something similar during golden time at school 🙂 I used to love building lego houses when I was small and particularly loved using the clear bricks for the windows!
I remember windows, too – and sloping tiles for the roof. Ah, happy memories 🙂
Thanks for including our home for Hiccup. I love the mansion, it looks brilliant. And I agree totally with you about the difficulty in finding non themed Lego sets (which are great, but not so good for letting imaginations flow). In fact, we too have found exactly the sane issue that you have so we ended up digging out my old Lego pieces and using them!
The old LEGO seems to be the best but as the youngest in the family, ours was taken by my eldest brother, so I’m thrilled LEGO sent us that new box – it’s brilliant!
Thank you for including my boys’ creations – they’re very proud. My 3 year old has been redeveloping his spaceship for weeks now, it spends most of the time at the end of his bed – it’s got a Star Wars bit and a helicopter bit and a part from a ship among others 😀
We bought two of those boxes from ASDA online reduced to £15 each, which is an excellent price for such as huge tub of bricks and bits. I look forward to seeing exactly what type of mansion Flea ends up with now! 🙂
That’s a top bargain and your boys put their LEGO to great use 🙂 Thanks for sending us the pic, Flea’s loved looking at them all.
Oh! Where on earth can I buy those?!! GG is totally fed up with pink these days and the LEGO friends isn’t doing it for her any more. She just wants to build!!!!!
It’s great, isn’t it? You can buy it online at Tesco for £25 at the moment, although there are offers from time to time too – http://www.tesco.com/direct/lego-bricks-more-creative-building-cube-10681/529-6828.prd – as Jenny mentioned Asda has been selling the same set at £15 in recent weeks.
I always wanted a proper set of lego or Meccano, I dislike the mostly ready built models, it takes away the pleasure of it.
I think they’re fun sometimes – Flea really enjoys LEGO Chima and we had great fun with the Christmas village set, and the vintage VW camper van. But this really is an entirely different sort of play, much more light-hearted and creative 🙂
You cant beat building your own creations with Lego, I know my son loves his box of my 1970’s retro bricks!!