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Kids Can Swipe a Screen But Can't Use LEGOs
SpankiMonki sends this news from The Guardian:
"Children are arriving at nursery school able to 'swipe a screen' but lack the manipulative skills to play with building blocks, teachers have warned. They fear that children are being given tablets to use 'as a replacement for contact time with the parent' and say such habits are hindering progress at school. Addressing the Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference in Manchester on Tuesday, Colin Kinney said excessive use of technology damages concentration and causes behavioural problems such as irritability and a lack of control."
We are talking about little kids. You tend to get them the Big Blocks instead. They come in a bucket and you use them to build random square objects. Sets for older kids tend to be more detailed and well beyond the scope.
Momento Mori
Kinesthetic learners are failed by touchscreens too. We're raising a new generation of latchkey kids.
Children arriving at nursery school don't need a $40 set to be building for an hour.
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I won't let them use a computer until they are 5.
They they'll get taken away by CPS.
The issue is not the building blocks themselves, but the serious lack of coordination skills on the part of the children.
If you can't get a couple of blocks to snap together, how are you going to deal with tying your shoes?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I didn't know that the bricks could only be used once, and in one specific order.
Allow me to blow your mind. Those same pieces can be used to build what ever you can imagine. Then they can be taken apart and used to build something totally different. The instructions are only a suggestion.
geez, when I was a kid we had to play around with the chemicals under the sink for entertainment ..
Most parents today are horrible. They do NOT interact with the chile like laying on the floor and playing with them. Get your asses off the couch and lie on the floor playing with your kids showing them how to stack blocks, and play.
I gave my daughter a earfull having my granddaughter use the ipad at 2 to keep her entertained. No you play with her using physical objects, and interaction.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You left out the thing that belongs to a lego.
at which point, all combinations of blocks and arrangements have been exhausted, the blocks thoughoughly used-up and worn-out, the $40 set must be tossed into the garbage.
congrats. you "beat" legos.
THL phish sticks
It because he uses the kragle.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Building Blocks simply means any number of a variety of blocks, most notably wooden building blocks.
LEGOs are a trademarked branded construction toy that goes together in a very specific way.
The point of this is that it's about physical dexterity.
This article does not reference Lego.
LEGO bricks are so expensive because of the extremely tight tolerances needed for them to fit together properly- 0.002mm. They are most definitely not a rip-off. You do have a point about the one-time thing, however.
OMG, are you serious? Here's a truism for you: if you think of LEGOs as model-building, you think of LEGOs as model-building.
Yeah, for licensed properties it's sometimes like building a model, and you may leave it set up. Maybe it's because I grew up with LEGO stuff before licensed versions were quite so popular, but the actual FUN of LEGOs is building something that's not already designed for you. Design a house. Dump your two spaceships (even if it's a licensed A-wing and a B-wing) into a pile and build one mega-ship. Create a better mousetrap. Put all the gears from your Technics sets into one giant gearbox, just for the heck of it.
It all comes down to being a responsible parent. If some of these people are handing them a tablet to babysit the kid, well yea, that's all they're going to know how to do. However, if the parents actually spend some time with their kids and do other things with them, there shouldn't be a problem. Let the kids use the tools and tech that is there for what they are : tools.
I'd also say that a tablet is better than just TV. Wouldn't you?
If you think all the iPads in the office are being used for business then your MDM sucks.
If you only built your Legos one time then you missed the point. Even the ones were kids are like "oh this is awesome I'm never taking it apart" ultimately wind up disassembled and part of something else.
It's not the blocks that are important, it is the active use of imagination and motor skills. Comparatively less imagination and motor skills are used interact with a flat, rectangular panel of glass. Kids learn (partly) by playing and doing. With tablet screens, they are not doing as much. Fruit Ninja does is not as good as blocks.
buy a pack of bricks, 600 or 1600, or even buy specific individual pieces and never use instructions.
I am 44, my son is 4 and we both take apart sets to use pieces any way we like.
did they say swipe or wipe?
and I'm very pleased that she does, they are the big blocks and she also has a mega blocks set. I belive she can swipe to unlock my phone but she tends to hit the emergency call button first since I a passcode to unlock set up.
Just a quick anacdote, I was surprised when I saw my friend's daughter sit in front of an iPad totally engrossed and playing a game, she's a month younger than my daughter and my littler girl would never sit still long enough to do something like that, even the simple bubble popping apps don't keep her attention (granted it's been at least 5 months since we've tried). I don't think it's a bad thing either way just one child is calmer and more focused while mine tends to be a slobbering hell beast bent on destruction :)
Exposing children to new technology is a terrible idea.
An Egyptian legend relates that when the god Thoth revealed his invention of writing to King Thamos, the good King denounced it as the enemy of civilization. "Children and young people," protested the monarch, "who had hitherto been forced to apply themselves diligently to learn and retain whatever was taught them would cease to apply themselves and would neglect to exercise their memories."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Mine do both. No reason not to. And they're girls. I teach them about tools as well as dolls.
Somebody failed at playing with legos.
We didn't give a tablet until age 4, for a very long car trip is what started it. They don't get it every day. Usually once or twice a week, and we limit it to 30 minutes. Sometimes an hour if it's a non school day.
But my daughter love's lego friends. And my son is huge into super heros/star wars lego's. Yes they are expensive, but we find sales usually.
I find it's about all around letting them do things. Out side play. Some kinect for bowling once in awhile instead of tablet time. Studying/reading/walking/biking. Just letting them go in my parents back yard for a few hours of "unsupervised" play (can see from deck/indoors).
My kids are now 5 and 7, K and 2nd. As soon as they start school they are on computers, touchscreens, tablets, etc. They have this white board thing. My daughter can pick up any electronic device and just know, faster then my wife. She's shown my wife how to operate the plex/chromecast device when my wife was first learning.
I don't necessarily see tablets/touchscreens as a bad thing, as long as in moderation. But esp since they are using it in school almost right away.
I have packed a car for a road trip countless times in my life, and my ability to find the correct pattern to fill all available space is directly attributable to my extensive practice with LEGO bricks.
Actually, I think my ability to pack parts onto a PCB layout tighter than most other engineers and layout designers is also drawn from this, and that does have direct job benefits.
Someone who played a lot of Tetris might have the same skills; I was never interested in that game.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Children today are retarded - physically, mentally, and emotionally, and they come from retarded parents.
The situation is going to get worse, not better, despite how many PSAs or "First Five" programs you trot out.
It takes a village to raise a child, but parents don't trust the village so they try to do it all themselves.
Then they realize it's too much fucking work for 2 people, 2 people who both need to keep their jobs, 1 person (since single parents are more common than not), or 1 person who's working a full-time job (or two). So the kids get plopped in front of the TV, a tablet, etc. and vegetate. Outside is dangerous, so kids don't play, they Google Play and get fat. When they enter school, the state becomes the sitter. Education and social interaction are to be avoided - the goals here are to not get sued and to try and make money off of attendance records and performance on standardized tests.
There are only 3 simple steps to solving this:
1: Stop having kids you when you can't handle kids (financially, mentally, temporally).
2: Stop having kids with people when you aren't both committed.
3: Stop wasting time coddling the broken kids in school - leave them behind in the bad schools and dumb classes and let decent kids get an education based on learning, not on administration.
Of course, none of this will happen because it involves people taking responsibility for themselves and their kids.
That sounds like a fun computation problem. (or maybe a 'Redmond-style' job interview question)
You have 2 2x8 lego bricks, how many ways can they be put together?
How about 3?
4?
What happened to playing with matches?
15 years ago they were grumbling these kids couldn't run nor catch a ball. Horrors, what will they be saying in 2025?
To be honest, I'm really disappointed with the modern lego sets. When I was a kid, I had the city sets, and for the most part they were buildings that you made from brick-shaped bricks with only a few uniquely molded parts for that set. Today there's barely any blocks. They're all cross-licensed tie-ins with movies or cartoons, and so in order to get the assembled set to look like something from The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, 75% of the blocks are special molds.
There's almost no point in it being a lego toy, because you're just assembling a crude model of an x-wing, and the only thing you can make with the set is...an x-wing. Why not just...play with a model x-wing?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
IF you only use it to build one set, then you are the problem, not Lego.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What do they mean by that exactly?
My feeling is... Playing around more in the "physical world" would give kids a better feel for different materials and objects, how they bend, break, etc. Playing around more in an abstract virtual world does not allow the kids to develop the same feel for materials, but on the other hand, does not limit them in the same way the physical world would do.
I guess, what goes around comes around. I'd vote for a healthy balance between "swiping screens" and playing with physical legos.
It takes far less motor coordination to "swipe a screen" (especially since most tablets that don't have a special unlock method like a password or pattern input will treat pretty much any touch on the screen as a "swipe" necessary to unlock it) than it does to put together Lego or other building blocks correctly. It also takes a considerable amount of strength to take them apart if you need to move the pieces. It's just as likely that the kids simply don't have the motor skills developed yet to use the blocks that it is the tablets are doing some kind of evil technology voodoo magic to make them bad at blocks, as some of these teachers seem to be suggesting.
The social aspects are wrong as well. For a lot of people, smartphones and tablets ARE a means of social contact - I bring my tablet to work all the time so I can IM my friends during my lunch break. Just because they're not talking to each other the way people did when I was a kid (mid-90s) doesn't mean they're not talking. Heck, I can remember spending recess as a kid doing pokemon battles and magic the gathering games, which I bet would look just as odd to these people if they were teaching in the 90s.
Then you've got some guy complaining that his students can't memorize lines for a play because information is too easy to archive. If he knew anything about anthropology, he'd know that's what separates modern man from cavemen - we can write down information and recall it later. In the words of SMBC, we don't need to store the fact that biggest meat is best meat in our brains because we can write it down and consult a book to find out which meat is best meat. What it sounds like this guy has is a bunch of young kids and a really boring play he had to force himself to memorize.
TL;DR, kids go for things that are interesting. They're not like adults who can force themselves to do the most mundane of tasks (hell, look at me doing data entry 8 hours a day). Tablets and smartphones are interesting to them, plays are not.
Reminds me of one of the most frustrating realizations of my life. When I was a kid, I was a big fan of Lego. I often asked for lego as gifts but rarely got any.
As an adult, I found out why. My mom asked me what a little boy in the family might want as a gift. I asked what he was into, and one of the things was Lego. Apparently he was a big fan too.
"Then you can't go wrong with more Lego," I said.
My mom replies "But he already has Lego."
*GIANT FUCKING FACEPALM*
Now it all made sense :-(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Those same pieces can be used to build what ever you can imagine.
No so easily nowadays. Lego comes with huge numbers of very specialized pieces which are taylor made for that particular model. You can get the basic bricks but most Lego today is aimed at building one model and then playing with it rather than getting a pile of bricks and letting your imagination run wild.
There is one exception though: Mindstorms! This is simply brilliant and the new EV3 version even runs Linux! It's one of the few toys that are around today that I really wish I had been available when I was a kid.
Just use an app to make Lego constructions on a tablet. Teachers these days have NO connection to reality!
You can purchase a tub of 500 lego for $50, or a tub of 100 duplo for $30.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
My two-year old uses the iPad nightly. When it's time to settle down after he's played with me (his dad) for a few hours after I get home from work. I get home and we play, laugh, rough-house, and read and play with toys. At night, when it's time to settle down (usually an hour, hour-and a half before bed) I let him chill with me on the couch or in his little chair on the iPad. Becuase of this, my son now knows his shapes, colors, alphabet and can count very well. I also use it, sometimes, as a potty-training utility. I sit and talk to him as he sits on the potty and when he does go, I take the iPad away, show him his work, and praise him. I'll admit sometimes when I'm too tired on the weekend I'll give it to him, but ultimately, multiple times a day I will take him outside to play on the playground outside of our apartment complex or at the park. I think iPad/screen time isn't a bad thing, as long as it's in moderation. When he goes to his grandmother's house (the one with all of the big blocks), he still has no problem stacking and building.
Colin Kinney said excessive use of technology damages concentration and causes behavioural problems such as irritability and a lack of control.
Seriously? These `behavioural problems` describe every pre-schooler I've ever met.
Don Dugger
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
My theory on this is that when we moved away from keyboards and mice in the use of phones and tablets, we did away with the last remnants of manipulating three-dimensional solid objects while interacting with computing devices.
I have this vague feeling that our connection to, and assumption that we can leverage, our animal evolutionary history is becoming more and more tenuous as we spend more of our time and focus interacting with items lacking analogs in nature:
As we control and manipulate our external environment more and more while continuously decreasing our bodies' physical engagement, I have to suspect that more of these secondary effects will surface. Just a hunch, I'm not passing judgement.
15 years ago they were grumbling these kids couldn't run nor catch a ball. Horrors, what will they be saying in 2025?
That use of a direct neural interface has rendered children unable to swipe to unlock.
"He is so stupid. And now back to the wall!" Moe Szyslak
Well you're supposed to glue them together as you build... right? Or am I doing it wrong...?
But they can't anymore. It used to be that way, but now that all the lego toys are tie-ins with Star Wars or the Lord of the Rings or something, almost all the pieces are specially molded "bricks" that really only make sense in the context of whatever the kit is. You can't really use such pieces for anything more than what they were designed for.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The main quote comes from a teacher who works for a think tank(that needs funding) talking about conversations he had with other teachers... not stuff he's done himself.
"I've spoken to a number of nursery teachers who have concerns over the increasing numbers of young pupils who can swipe a screen but have little or no manipulative skills to play with building blocks – or pupils who can't socialise with other pupils, but whose parents talk proudly of their ability to use a tablet or smartphone."
Lego isn't an acronym, so why capitalize it? It's an uncountable noun, so why pluralize it?
Because you're THICK, that's why.
Because LEGO is the official name for the bricks from the LEGO group: http://aboutus.lego.com/en-us
Your attempt at being obnoxious isn't obnoxious; it's just obvious.
It's true and sad, most parents are lazy and just frankly don't care about there kids. Why is a kid under the age of 7 even swiping a screen to begin with. Electronics are a bad idea to use as a substitute for interaction in childhood, any rational adult knows that to be a fact.
"Kids these days can't even swipe a tablet, all wired-up as they are with these direct brain interfaces! It's terrible I tell you, terrible!"
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Even if we cut off the symetries, there`s an infinite number of ways that you can assemble them. Don`t believe me ? Hehe let`s start from the beginning ..
Lets say, we use either as the bottom one, but that`s considered symetric, so we only look as a fixed bottom one and another to attach to. You could put exactly over it, then you could move up on the side for a total of 8 positions. Either side are symetric. Then, you could move it to the side by one, and repeat. You could also move it to the other side, but that`s symetric. And the symetry of moving on the other side and off by -1 is ignored too. So, in the same axis, we have 16 non-symetric positions.
Now, they could be installed centered at at 90 degree angle, where you`d have 5 non-symetric positions to move the top one. Then you could move it toward the end of the bottom one, again repeating those 5 positions, and that up to 5 times for a total of 25 non symetric positions in this arrangeemnt. So far we have a total of 41 non-symetric positions.
Finally, that`s where it gets interesting. When you have a single locked point, you can rotate it to any angle you wish (in the valid range, which I don`t happen to know at this time and don`t have the time to try to compute), thus providing an infinite number of positions they can be locked together. And you have 4 of those infinites, 2 points on the bottom one, linking to either of the 2 end points of the top one (the others are symetric to those, again) Have fun trying this with 3 :)
They'll be saying "kids can't swipe a screen anymore. Or build lego. Or run or catch a ball.".
which is already concerning, as fine motor skills are very important, the other sentence in the article that worried me was the mention that kids now have trouble memorizing even simple lines for a play, since they are used to information being easily always available so they aren't putting in the effort of learning it.
As much as easy global information access is great, unless you learn the basics it's quite difficult to make sense of what's available and to have an informed opinion. Just because you have a river of information always available it doesn't help if you can't relate to it, it makes you that much more susceptible to being influenced, because since you are not able to discriminate between quality information and misleading or wrong information, any page/blog/article of somebody with an agenda can just point to "studies" that support their point (no matter how objectively wrong that point is) and it transforms informed discussions into popularity contests.
I don't think it's tinfoil hat time in terms of there being some sort of overall arching conspiracy about this, but it sure is concerning when you have a society like ours where media has many orders of magnitude more funding and impact than academia, I mean, even the word "academia" nowadays is overlaid with negative connotations (at least in North America) rather than the respect it should evoke: these days an actor/model stating an opinion can easily counterbalance hundreds of scientists/academics with fact-based studies.
Before the internet there were just as many crackpot theories around, however they were not presented as if they were the same as science, if you went to the library you wouldn't find in the astronomy section geocentric books shelved together with heliocentric and general relativity ones: now with your browser on the "internet library" you can find professional-looking sites pro/anti everything and without the tools learned in school/university how can you make sense of which is right? especially in cases where the science is counter-intuitive for a particular issue?
-- the cake is a lie
Its LEGO, not LEGOs...
Kids will be familiar with whatever he/she has had time to play with. Ability to build legos doesn't come built it, kids who haven't seen one will still have to learn how to build them.
did you forget to take your meds?
LEGO is a name and trademark that is officially registered as all-caps, so all-caps usage is perfectly acceptable. Calling individual LEGO bricks "LEGOs" or "Legos" as colloquial shorthand is very common usage and is also perfectly acceptable (you won't see the company do it, of course, because nounification and verbification of a trademark dilutes it - ie. "Bill, xerox this for me!" - so it will always officially be "LEGO (R) pieces"). LEGOs are quite countable - if you're having trouble with that, maybe you should have played with your tablet less as a youngster.
I gave my daughter a earfull having my granddaughter use the ipad at 2 to keep her entertained. No you play with her using physical objects, and interaction.
There is a simple, less confrontational solution to this which solves both problems at once and provides an important, although expensive, lesson about not giving toddlers unsupervised access to delicate electronics. Introduce your granddaughter to the joys of a toy wooden hammer - the sort that comes with the hammer through peg sets. Then stand back and watch the fun although of course once the screen cracks you'll need to remove the iPad for safety. Even if the hammer is removed I was always amazed at how much our kids liked to hammer using any available implement once they got the hang of it.
You're doing it wrong. LEGO kits are intended to be assembled into a model, then disassembled and reassembled into a different model. That's why the enclosed instruction book shows how to build more than one model. For a dramatization of how wrong you're doing it, go see The LEGO Movie.
Wow, if my parents tried to tell me how to raise my kids they wouldn't have much access to their grandchildren after that. You must have very understanding children.
Or perhaps mature children who recognize that they are new at parenting and that their parents might actually know something about raising kids. As opposed to immature children who are still in an immature teen-like my-parents-know-nothing phase. For the latter, don't worry, most of you will grow out of it, as you learn the lesson your parents already did, develop the experience they already have.
Seriously people. Children have not changed. They are still the result of millions of years of evolution that expects them to be reaching for physical things and manipulating them. Learning to judge distance and spatial relationships, manipulate objects through 3d space, etc.
Relegating them to tapping on glass seems like quite the experiment.
We are talking about little kids. You tend to get them the Big Blocks instead.
... because little kids don't have the dexterity to use regular Legos. The reason two year old kids can use an iPad and aren't ready for standard Legos is because the latter requires more skill. TFA claims claims that exposing kids to technology is causing our civilization to spiral down the drain, but provides no evidence whatsoever, other than anecdotes and conjecture.
Actually, there are quite a few nice sets which I`ve purchased for my kids. I agree that there's a lot of bad sets out there, but I look at my old sets instructions advertisement pages, and there was also a lot of bad sets 30 years ago but we didn`t happened to purchase them either :)
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/crea...
http://www.lego.com/en-us/tech...
Ok, that last one`s for me :)
"Kids these days can't even swipe a tablet, all wired-up as they are with these direct brain interfaces! It's terrible I tell you, terrible!"
In 2025, they probably will be stuck in their Buy 'N Large hover recliners, with drones delivering everything and informercials streamed directly to their heads-up or retinal displays. They won't need silly things like "interfaces" for antiquated notions like "choice".
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
We had TV, PC, gaming console and now tablet.... what next?
couldn't run nor catch a ball
Yeah, that's what they said. Now we've got a nation full of lard asses piling into SSI disability because their bodies are ruined.
Fifteen years from now we'll have all that plus they'll be profoundly nearsighted from excessive iPhone use starting at age 2.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
There are three sizes, I think. The standard LEGO size, the Duplo size, and the Mega-block size. The last one is HUGE, and it's so big I'm not sure I see a point. My experience so far says they can hold and manipulate the Duplo by the time they are 18 months. Not expertly, but enough to put some pieces togethera, and there's nothing wrong with a little challenge. Plus, Duplo are far more reasonable to merge with the small LEGO size when they graduate, while Mega Block size are so big they're basically unrelated.
It also fails to acknowledge that LEGO is itself technology -- relatively modern, high technology in the grand scheme of humanity -- or provide any meaningful distinction between "good" technologies like verbal language and "bad" technologies like iPads.
As with virtually all "kids these days" rants it's nothing more than an attempt to relive the past by forcing it on today's young people.
give the toddlers a bunch of building blocks and hang the tablet from the ceiling.
I'm sure there's an App that simulates working with legos.
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
Except that you're actually wrong.
minifgures (lego people) and their tools/accessories aside, the models today are almost completely made from select colors of commodity pieces.
What's changed is that the range of commodity pieces has expanded some, and models in general tend to make more use of some more elaborate pieces that attach in ways which allow more articulation of the model as well as smaller pieces (meaning they favor plates over bricks).
Sure that X-wing may have a special R2-D2 minifigure and windshield piece, but the rest of it will be common plates and a few bricks, with some hinges for the S-foils.
Now if you're buying the $10 sets you're probably getting like 1-2 mini figures and a tree (or setting apropriate equivalent) and that may look like it's 90% custom molded tree pieces, but when you go for the bigger $60+ sets you get tons of structural pieces.
Seriously. I didn't like LEGO much as a kit, but I had a Robotix kit, and once I'd built some of the models I started modifying them as I liked. Once I was bored with that I just started designing my own robots. That's the way it works.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
More stupidity from Luddite whiners.
Give the kids some time and they'll figure them out.
And if you continue to assume kids are stupid, they will grow up to be idiots just like the ones conducting the study.
The last one is HUGE, and it's so big I'm not sure I see a point.
The purpose is to sell you three sets of LEGOs rather than just two.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
FTFY.
Think of it this way: Your kids are geting a head start at Harvard Business School.
Have gnu, will travel.
Have you actually purchased those kits? Most of the pieces are not specially molded bricks.
This is completely wrong. Here's the instructions to the latest X-Wing. Flip to the back and count the number of "special molds" yourself. Do you see anything in there that can't be used for anything but an X-Wing?
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Parents responded by waving their hands in a brisk right-to-left motion in front of their eyes. "Hey!" They exclaimed, "Why won't these annoying lecturers just go away".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
But they can't anymore. It used to be that way, but now that all the lego toys are tie-ins with Star Wars or the Lord of the Rings or something, almost all the pieces are specially molded "bricks" that really only make sense in the context of whatever the kit is. You can't really use such pieces for anything more than what they were designed for.
I can see you have not set foot in a Lego store, or been to a toy store that stocks more than the current popular thing because Lego offers a TON of other sets that far eclipse the sets of those 2 franchises.
Also, new sets don't have they many specialized pieces. In fact none of the sets I've bought for my 3.5 year old have had any specialized parts I couldn't quickly find a use for besides maybe the trash cans that came with the garbage truck set.
If a wooden block can be a car and a stick can be a gun, I'm gonna call shenanigans on this. It's not a limitation of the specialty pieces, but of the imagination.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Q: What's the most useless lego piece ?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Velcro, it's a lot easier to use than shoe laces.
After a week in class with only blocks and peers playing with blocks to interact with how many kids are still sufficiently divergent from the norm for concern?
Having skill at playing with building blocks is not useful to most modern jobs. I'm sure the children are not great at milking cows either.
Either of those would make you stand out in a job interview alongside a bunch of people who only know how to swipe.
No sig today...
The problem is that you think the iPad is the problem.
LEGOs can be used infinite ways, to create all kinds of things from the imagination. Guess what? So can an iPad.
It is the lazy f'n parents, who take the easiest way out to pacify their over protected brats, and wonder why they cry when they don't get what they want later in life.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
We are talking about little kids. You tend to get them the Big Blocks instead.
In what universe?
For the last two years every toddler-owner I meet is incredibly proud that their 2-year old knows how to swipe (and they keep reminding everybody in sight).
"Oh, you should see him use the iPhone!".
No sig today...
Just because the article is a terrible piece objectively and doesn't link to any hard data doesn't mean the data doesn't exist. There are plenty of data to suggest that tablet use isn't the best for kids' brains. Enough evidence to suggest that ANYTHING else would be better, including (OHMYGAWD) playing with LEGOs.
Both my kids were heavy into Legos up until about a year ago.
What happened?
They discovered Minecraft.
They are still building (virtual) things and using their imagination and problem solving skills.
I now save hundreds of dollars a year not buying Legos.
Win/Win
The reason two year old kids can use an iPad and aren't ready for standard Legos is because the latter requires more skill. TFA claims claims that exposing kids to technology is causing our civilization to spiral down the drain, but provides no evidence whatsoever, other than anecdotes and conjecture.
While no hyperbole such as civilization spiraling down the drain or even anything close to it TFA say that:
Children are arriving at nursery school able to "swipe a screen" but lacking the manipulative skills to play with building blocks, teachers have warned. They fear that children are being given tablets to use "as a replacement for contact time with the parent" and say such habits are hindering progress at school.
While as you write there is little support for what is written beyond anecdotes and conjecture it most definitely is something that deserve attention and scientific studies not people getting their panties in a bundle over imaginary luddites.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Yes, LEGO can be used in multiple ways, but the markup on formed plastic chunks is insane.
Actually, TFA doesn't mention LEGO at all, the submitter just decided it was talking about LEGO when it was actually talking about building blocks
There's almost no point in it being a lego toy, because you're just assembling a crude model of an x-wing, and the only thing you can make with the set is...an x-wing. Why not just...play with a model x-wing?
Seriously... watch the lego movie... or hell just look at some of the sets they've released based on the movie.
I think this one illustrates my point:
http://static.indigoimages.ca/...
Take a good look at it. The 'goblet' piece is a gun. The wagon wheels are the engine turbines, the turbine housings are those molded castle tower pieces. The half-barrel is the pilots seat. Torches reworked into a missile launcher. The working catapult?... well they kept that.
They took a medieval gate and cart and turned it into something akin to a pod-racer, as an official set.
The lego movie and movie sets simultaneously agrees with all your complaints ... and then proves your conclusion wrong.
Granted a single small lego set is usually only much good for a particular model or a variation on a theme. But after you've got 5 or 6 lego sets especially if they are from different themes you can build pretty much anything. Medieval space ships, sailing ships out of space lego, Giant transforming robots out of lego city vehicles.
Honestly there were a bit of a bad spot in the late 90s where the lego wasn't as good, but the current sets and over the last 5-10 years are an absolute joy.
I recommend any parent with kids becoming lego aged to start with a basic bulk bucket. I think there's a yellow bucket out right now 600 basic bricks for $40 bucks.
Then you throw in a star wars or batman set or two so the kid has a couple minifigures, droids (my son loves r2d2s), light sabers, etc. And then build out from there.
The new lego master builder academy sets are BRILLIANT too.
http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Mas...
The instruction books alone are nearly with the price of entry.
I grew up in the Soviet Union and played quite a lot with Soviet construction sets, like these ones: http://www.girdersandgears.com...
I was mentally scarred for most of my childhood as a result - it was not possible to build even a half of what was shown in the instruction manuals for these construction sets. And buying another set? In Soviet Union? Fuhgetaboutid.
Only later I understood that this was a secret Soviet weapon to train young minds to improvise and imagine.
I'm going to go with this part:
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=54092c01
It can be the front of a plane or something else that looks like the front of a plane.
The rest of the parts in that set seem pretty useful though:
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=3182-1
Anything weighing more than ten bricks.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
FOR the LOVE of GOD, PLEASE GIVE THESE KIDS a COPY of MINECRAFT. Lol j/k
P2P Anonymous Distributed Web Search: http://www.yacy.net/
wedge shaped wing ramps -- the angles don't work with anything else.
OR
rubber band holders
Exactly. Take a tub of standard bricks (yes, they still sell those) and dump in 2-3 random licensed sets, the kind with the so-called "specialized" pieces. This is what I would call a pretty good set.
My parents had me on technic sets before I hit third grade. Back in the days where a tv couldn't watch your kids that was the best way to keep them occupied for weeks on end. It was either that or puzzles, in which I had the horrific adventure of putting together a 1000+ piece space puzzle... the kind without any nebulae or anything that could give you a reference point. The only thing that was "easy" was the edge pieces. Now that I look back on that, it seems pretty evil, but that was fun for the times.
I came across these lego sets recently (the hero factory or something ones) and it cost 30 bucks for 300 pieces. Most of it was "pre-assembled" (a head was just a head piece, a shield just a shield piece, an arm was 3 pieces just because they wanted an elbow and a hand) - it was for ages 8-16... That's a goddamn joke.
Why do you get this wrong? The plural of Lego is Lego, how hard is that?
...far too many people can't even spell LEGO.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Legos and tablets are two different thing. The author is clearly not fit to know the difference.
Well yes and no. Yes, it's overpriced. But when my son plays with them in ways I don't like (that is, I like to follow the instructions and only sometimes make changes for improved look or structure) he gets many hours more. He builds crazy and silly things but then again, he's 7 so what do you know?
Sad that kids can't use their hands. I didn't realize it was becoming a problem as I am trying my best to give my son the type of childhood I had. And yes, that includes teaching him how to go camping and fishing and shoot a gun and all of that. Am I a caveman?
I'm going to go with this part:
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=54092c01
It can be the front of a plane or something else that looks like the front of a plane.
The rest of the parts in that set seem pretty useful though:
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=3182-1
Is your imagination broken dude? I could use that part for *TONS* of different models! Granted, it's gonna be a cockpit, but it doesn't have to be an airplane cockpit... It could be used on a racecar, submarine, spaceship, crane, whatever! (I think I would use it on a monorail - that would be fun!) You could also face it backwards or sideways for a very unique model! It could probably also prove useful somehow in a GBC module. (http://www.greatballcontraption.com/)
Yes, there are many specialized parts nowadays, but the trick is finding new and fun ways to use it.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
You forgot to say "get off my lawn."
What is this http://www.bricklink.com/ you speak of? Hm....
// looking
Oh crap. There goes my afternoon.
Not A Sig
$40 for a set you build one time that takes an hour or so
And now you know the reason patience is considered a virtue, along with imagination and creativity.
The problem is this generation says fuck you to virtue if it takes more than 17 seconds to do.
3-hour movie sagas went to 2-hour action-filled testosterone shootouts that went to 5-minute YouTube rants that went to 6-second Vine shitcoms.
Multi-page handwritten letters in cursive went to typed emails that went to typed Twitter remarks that went to voice-activated chat responses.
If you look at our most popular products, Patience was banished from society long ago.
Tying shoes? Is that some bizarre fetish?
Getting shoes to stay on your feet is done with things like elastic, velcro, zippers or snaps.
Q: What's the most useless lego piece ?
I've always found the single square pieces to be the most useless and the easiest to lose. I could build a detailed model as a kid and the parts that always were prone to falling apart used the single square. Lego always included them in kits where a 1x3 or 1x4 would work better. I understand that they did it to provide a greater variety of pieces for building unique designs but I never ended up using them for anything....
Mega-Block is a parallel to Minecraft. The size of the blocks irritates me. I've seen some more recent games in development that allow multiple sizes of blocks. Those will be the better system. Minecraft is "fine," but the ball has been dropped and is being picked up slowly by other indie developers.
I was fine as a kid with colored wooden blocks learned such things as rudimentary physics (balance points and so forth). Could make anything with those Jenga-shaped blocks as a kid if I had enough. Could even now.
The importance of being able to craft and visualize in 3d is important in a lot of jobs, not only in technology. Giving a tablet to a kid under 10 should be stopped. It may have a use, but I doubt it is being used properly in limited amounts that this article is complaining about.
Well, I suppose raising a generation with gorilla arms would be funny.
Do you have any idea how close a tolerance you must have in order to have millions of bricks and have any pair of them mate cleanly, easily, and with sufficient clutch to not immediately fall off? And have multiple "legal" connection locations on each brick? And permit multiple bricks attach with equal spacing and equivalent strength?
We are talking a process capability that rivals, if not vastly exceeds, most aerospace manufacturers. No disrespect to the rocket science guys, but we are talking tight tolerances on small parts.
-
The kits that used to be just a random collection of bricks are a lot harder to find today. Head over to Toys-R-Us and almost all of it (other than big blox things for toddlers) are specialized kits. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc. The lego kits we had in the 70s or 80s just aren't common at local stores.
"Building blocks" in an educational setting usually means literally blocks. As in those basic, wooden squares or rectangles that a toddler should be able to use loooong before you move them on to interlocking blocks (Duplos or Big Blocks) since interlocking blocks of any scale require more dexterity than building blocks do.
If a kid can't grasp and stack those wooden blocks, then mommy really is using the screen to avoid spending time with their kid.
The issue is not the building blocks themselves, but the serious lack of coordination skills on the part of the children.
If you can't get a couple of blocks to snap together, how are you going to deal with tying your shoes?
As someone who couldn't tie their shoes until age 14 but has been playing with Lego since about 6 (and Duplo since even earlier), those are not necessarily related.
My mother-in-law is the same way. We bought our kid a bunch of Legos for christmas a couple years ago. MIL comment? "Oh, good thing I didn't get her Legos then!"
Blah.
Society is changing. Technology is changing. Therefore, it seems a logic conclusion that how we learn and what we learn, from the onset, changes. I feel the people complaining (educators and teachers association) that kids aren't learning how to play with blocks are more concerned about preserving their existing jobs rather than adjusting to a changing world.
That doesn't mean I think learning to play with blocks, lincoln logs, or lego is wrong or outdated. I think the complaining by the teachers association is just that...complaining.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
You are clearly doing it wrong. You build the set, then you tear it apart and build the other projects on the back of the box that don't have instructions, then you tear it apart and build a Mech, then you tear it apart and build a space ship, then you tear it apart, throw it in with your other legos, stir, and then build some random thing. Then you do it again.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
We are talking about little kids. You tend to get them the Big Blocks instead.
... because little kids don't have the dexterity to use regular Legos. The reason two year old kids can use an iPad and aren't ready for standard Legos is because the latter requires more skill.
How did we go from building blocks for 2-year old kids to standard lego blocks? You know there is a difference, do you? If not, please STFU. Just to help you and those who sadly do not know the difference:
TFA claims claims that exposing kids to technology is causing our civilization to spiral down the drain,
TFA is not claiming that. You are claiming that it does, though.
but provides no evidence whatsoever, other than anecdotes and conjecture.
Anecdotes and conjecture are valid form of preliminary evidence with which to request further scrutiny of something.
Also, from personal anecdote (feel free to dismiss because ZOMFG anecdote!) kids at that early stage require specific stimulus to develop hand fine grained motor skills. Playing with sand, clay or building blocks (not standard lego blocks, but building blocks for toddlers) help do that.
Going into the (ZOMG!) anecdote: One of my nephews had a learning disability co-related to not developing hand fine motor skills, some type of proprioception problem related to ADHD/Asperger/Autism. He simply could not hold a pen without it falling off his fingers. Good fortune it was detected on time, and was put on specific corrective therapy to develop not just finger strength but the necessary coordination to do what he needed to do with his hands during that state of his body/mind development.
Feel free to dismiss this as you wish. Whatever gets your intellectual kicks.
With that said, I'm not against kids using technology. I was delightfully fascinated when I saw my older daughter (now 5) using my smart phone at the age of 2, and I'm fascinated how my youngest one (1.5 year old) fiddled her way into unlocking my phone (despite it being locked with a swipe-shape lock.)
But I keep my daughters away from technology if that precludes them from the other type of tactile-proprioceptive activities that have been developed over time to assist in their development: finger painting, puzzles, blocks, sculpting with silly putty, running around.
All those things are fun, but they are not just for fun. They have an evolutionary purpose.
There is a reason why kids play with soil instinctively. It is not just curiosity. It is the child mind and body instinctively seeking activities that trigger learning and development.
already see how I could use that piece as the cockpit for a giant robot, and on a sufficiently large build it could be part of a giant mech's jetpack. Sure, its the front of a plane, but if you get novel with it, it can be bunches of "Not exactly a plane"
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
I'm pretty sure that the biggest reason for our nation's poor health is the food that we eat, not our activity levels. If everybody ate reasonable portions of whole, organic food, then they wouldn't be overweight, regardless of their activity level.
Ship's prow (upside down)
Several hinged for a claw.
Aerodynamic fairing around the parts of a vehicle that fits into the front of another vehicle to lock it into the assembly (c.f. the Phoenix from Battle of the Planets)
Scoops on a water wheel, or teeth on a rotary digger
So there's four off the top of my head in a couple of minutes without any brinks in reach to doodle with.
Stop trying to blame other people for your lack of creativity.
Maybe your ability to pack the car efficiently is because you "have packed a car for a road trip countless times in [your] life"
...excessive use of technology damages concentration and causes behavioural problems such as irritability and a lack of control.
NO IT FUCKING DOESN'T <scream/>
Offset vertical joints for a stronger structure (look at actual bricklaying)
Shims to close a gap due to rotation of peg axis.
Spot color
LEGO can be used in multiple way
They can also be used to slow down bare-foot pursuers!
If a wooden block can be a car and a stick can be a gun, I'm gonna call shenanigans on this. It's not a limitation of the specialty pieces, but of the imagination.
Children's play doesn't work the way you seem to think it does. http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195393002.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195393002 from the Oxford Library of Psychology is a good developmental psychology examination of children's play, but the TL/DR gist for your concern is that excessive or overly-guided play very much turns into instruction rather than imaginative free-play. So giving a young child toys whose intended use is obvious really does tend to block them from exploring ways to use it imaginatively.
There's nothing wrong with giving your kids a Mike the Knight outfit or an Ariel costume, but also stock their toy chest with unrelated bits and pieces that can free their imagination. The second four most valuable words when raising a kid can be "What do you think?"
Thats pretty much what I had. I think most of my initial legos came from McDonalds, back when happy meal toys where small lego sets. Then I got a little space flier thing for christmas, and after that I got a set that made a front end loader. (my sister got legos those years also) After that it was a space shuttle kit, and an ice planet mining rig kit, and they where all in a bucket together, and thats how you played legos. Kit bash them into giant robots, boats, space ships, anything, It sort of depended on what movie we had seen recently (Robot Jox resulted in a LOT of giant robots piloted by a minifig).
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
The reason two year old kids can use an iPad and aren't ready for standard Legos is because the latter requires more skill.
Another factor is that regular legos are (and always have been) a choking hazard for two year olds. iPads generally aren't.
The phrase you are looking for is "The Pumping Lemma".
Next year is 2015.
Power Laceups! Far Out!
OP just has poor concentration and manipulative skills. Plus he's really irritable.
The Rothschild's would be very pleased.
Precisely. And on top of that, the few "X wing" parts that are custom made for the set can easily be used for any number of things, especially if you want to build any sort of giant robot of space ship. (which is what legos are for right?)
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
"Kids these days can't even swipe a tablet, all wired-up as they are with these direct brain interfaces! It's terrible I tell you, terrible!"
In 2025, they probably will be stuck in their Buy 'N Large hover recliners, with drones delivering everything and informercials streamed directly to their heads-up or retinal displays. They won't need silly things like "interfaces" for antiquated notions like "choice".
Oh dear dear god! Please let me live long enough to have one of those Recliners!! I would call it my retirement home.
I have NO idea how many lego sets I had. IMHO the "junk" of the sets were the windows, people, wheels, the stupid closed minded stuff. I preferred the raw blocks, mainly the 2x4 and the longer ones that were in such short supply. I mad some amazing things, including a box with a door locked by three tumblers, that required its lego key to open. (if it had been glued together, naturally)
I also had dominos and blocks, two capsula sets (adding a switch, motor, and wires to the mix), an old and a new girder n panel set (kinda meh), tinker toys (also meh), and later a number of assemblable toys like a little battery powered toy boat I had to wind the motor (dc windings) on, a ball clock, crystal radio, and by age 10 two electronic design experimenter (150 and 200 in 1's). I did a LOT of building when I was growing up. (though a good deal of it started going toward electronics by the time I was a teen)
Kids need a shot at that sort of play when they're growing up. It's not going to be for everyone, but this whole culture of "stick an ipad in his hands" by default is just a shame. Ikea is going to go out of business by the next generation, nobody will be able to assemble any of their furniture!
I was just talking with a friend of mine, father of my godson, about the possibility of getting him into arduino. Wow, he's gonna be NINE this December, and he doesn't have anywhere near the head-start I did. I did manage to inspire him with a variety of art supplies which he loves, and got him several of those assemblable bots from radio shack last year, trying to get him a good start and taste of things that he finds he has an aptitude for. It's not just building things, kids need to get exposure to a variety of things as early as possible, so they get their feet wet with essential flexible skills like buidling, as well as getting a taste of variety to see what they really enjoy.
But being able to make things, that's such a basic, universal skill. It's one that every kid should get heavy exposure to, in a format they can enjoy excelling in.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
So true, especially these days. "Snap the x-wing cockpit piece onto the x-wing body piece, then attach the x-wing wing pieces." Bleh. I remember when LEGO was fun. For instance, the technic kits- build a plane (with moving propeller), or a helicopter (with rotating blades and tail blades) with the same kit, just put together differently. ( Search 'LEGO technic 950')
Tying shoes?
There IS an app for that. Several actually.
You just know that's how those kids will learn it.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
My daughter can do both. She'd get bored playing with either one for too long.
I always loved technology, but my parents were poor, bad with money, cheap, whatever you want to call it. I always knew I wanted to do something with technology, but they hated everything about it (still used rotary phones til the late 90's) You don't necessarily want to deprive kids of technology. There should be some sort of balance, if they are just arriving in nursery school and all they have is blocks, they will learn to use them. If all they have is a tablet, they will use the tablet. There are probably all sorts of toys I am others would take a while to learn, yoyo's, juggling, toys where you try and get the ball in the cup, jacks, etc. fde
More specifically, that information was on the History page at that site:
Teachers have a vested interest in attacking technology that undermines their importance. Keep that in mind when you read any stories attacking the use of technology in education at any level.
My 2yo son can assemble Legos just fine. If you sit down with a 2yo like ten times and you put the blocks together he'll figure out how to do it too. The problem is not the tablets (my son plays with those too and he can also swipe), the problem is that some parents don't sit down with their kids so the kids have no one to learn "difficult" things from.
So are kids. One night of pleasure costs you 18 years (if you're lucky) and about $500K.
Hope is the currency of fools
The problem here is that manual dexterity is still quite important and the early years are the most important for developing it. It would be a shame if in 20 years we start seeing screwdriver for dummies books.
how are you going to deal with tying your shoes?
Allright! POWER LACES!
Captcha: Planning.. I'm planning to buy these in 2015
My child has been using an Ipad and Big blocks since she has been 2yrs old. She got her first lego set this year before she turned three years old. She has never had any trouble using either one. My guess is we as her parents interact with blocks and Ipad. The iPad is not a baby sitter. I also don't trust studies.
Due to a genetic condition my 7 y.o. son has severe motor skills issues (unable to stand, or hold a paint brush or pencil), He also has profound intellectual disabilities, and is unable to speak. He can however get around his iPad like the best of them - browsing Elmo songs on his youTube favorites, watching home videos, playing "Old MacDonald" and ordering his favourite snacks for morning tea using assisted communication apps. The benefits of this technology for him and others with special needs amazing!
However, even though he can't use a fork or knife, he can still stack MegaBlocks and Duplo... but only because we invest our time by playing with him and supporting him..
The all-caps usage is acceptable... but in addition to being the company name, Lego (or LEGO) is a word that refers to any number of individual pieces, Adding an s on the end to pluralize it is about as correct as putting an 's' after words like sheep.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
They can swipe a smart phone, too, if you know what I mean.
It also fails to acknowledge that LEGO is itself technology -- relatively modern, high technology in the grand scheme of humanity
It actually is... saw a documentaries on their factories and design process, it's pretty high tech. Designer scults a model out of clay, 3-D scans it, refines it on the computer. Then they build a custom metal piece into which plastic will be poured to create the pieces (don't know how that part works but each one costs some 100k) and have machines that pump out large numbers of pieces with fairly demanding tolerances (so the pieces will hold together tightly but not jam), which go into conveyor belts that automatically sort the right number and type of pieces into the different sets, etc...
It's both. When I ran the stunt show I was consuming around 3K calories a day. Now that I don't, I don't. Even if you're consuming 2K a day, if you don't leave you're chair, you will put on weight. If you reduce your intake, you may not be overweight, but you'll certainly be weak. Just as bad.
If they're proud that their 2 year old can swipe, then THEY are the problem... I am proud that my 2 year old can walk, run, speak and spell... I would be very fucking disappointed if all she could do at 2 years of age was to "swipe"...
These retarded "toddler-owner" types are the root of the problem... They don't teach their child anything... They will be the same parents that are incredibly proud that their teenage son can finally wipe his own ass...or that he doesn't shit his pants anymore....
Children are becoming dumber because their parents lack the skills to parent effectively...LEGO is a superior tool for developing spatial and cognitive abilities rather than some bullshit apps on the latest tablet.
The car packing came after the Legos would be my bet.
Those same pieces can be used to build what ever you can imagine.
No so easily nowadays. Lego comes with huge numbers of very specialized pieces which are taylor made for that particular model. You can get the basic bricks but most Lego today is aimed at building one model and then playing with it rather than getting a pile of bricks and letting your imagination run wild.
Not quite true. This was a trend at lego some years back, back when the company was in a bit of a slump. More recently, they try to limit the number of new custom pieces designed for each set. Quite apart from re-play and creative value, each new part requires an expensive and costly to maintain custom mold (we're talking some 100k euros if I recall correctly). In a documentary I saw, the lego designer was saying that for the police station she was developing she was not using any custom parts (that were not already in use in past sets) so she was able to instead add a custom police-dog figure.
or provide any meaningful distinction between "good" technologies like verbal language and "bad" technologies like iPads.
Definition: Technology: Anything that was invented after I was born.
Oh crap. There goes my afternoon.
Also all of your disposable income.
Why dirty your hands with Legos when there's an app for that?
If you can't get a couple of blocks to snap together, how are you going to deal with tying your shoes?
Fair point. Children have never had an issue learning how to tie shoes.
Velcro
Yep. I really pissed off my relatives years ago when my daughter and I went to Christmas at their house. I brought every kid two things, a flashlight for reading in bed and a box of clay. The kids and I sat around for hours playing with the clay while the sparkly toys just sat there.
At a glance, the LEGO Movie sets remind me a lot of the TimeCruisers and TimeTwisters sets... These sets were SO random that they seemed like a combination of all the crappy lego pieces that you couldn't make anything from...
And they never sold well, so a lot of local stores cleared them out at firesale prices... But I bought 20 of the identical sets at the same time, and once I had all of them, I couldn't believe how many very popular and expensive pieces I had for Castles, Pirates, and Old West that helped to expand my collection... At a fraction of the cost...
I expect the same will be true for the LEGO movie sets... People will pass them over for the Star Wars and LOTR sets, and I'll be there to pick up the pieces...pardon the pun...
The term for playing alongside is "parallel play" and, as you noticed, children can be ready for it some time after they turn 1.
The thing is: you might have seen it as boring but there is plenty of opportunity to encourage child development with parallel play because if you play with the same or a similar toy alongside them you can demonstrate new ways to play with that item and they will pick that up.
Oh the joys of being a psychologist and finally getting to put years of study into practice without prior committee approval ;-)
Posting anon for obvious reasons...
You could always pull out the Knife of Exact Zero and make some cuts to the piece.
By the way, what's a wedge shaped wing ramp?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
This is one of the things they teach in Montessori schools, too. I can also perfectly judge what size container I need for leftovers.
No insult intended, but did your mom time-warp from a different era? Is she from a different country? Any parent who's walked through a Toys-R-Us within the last 20 years, at least, could see the oodles of Legos sets on the toy shelves. The singular response would be more appropriate to someone who's never seen them, before, but that can't be anyone in this country from the last 40 or 50 years.
-- greenLed
And then there's the Mixels. 5 bucks MSRP, using a subset of blocks that make them very easy to combine with each other. You even get suggestions on how to combine them from the website.
wow man, you have a seriously limited imagination then, specialised pieces sure as hell don't limit you, you can use them, wait for it, for things they weren't designed for!!!!!!
shocking I know!
Megablocks are not LEGOs. They are made by a different company, and "happen to" be sort-of compatible with proper LEGOs. If you have ever tried comparing them, you'd be sure to find that Megablocks do not stick together as well as LEGOs - I believe that LEGOs are produced to much finer tolerances than Megablocks.
Disclaimer: I am Danish, and (naturally?) a LEGO fan. To me, Megablocks and LEGOs are completely different. Just like water and Carlsberg are different (yes: I was bottle fed as a baby. Live with it)
I'm most interested in why Americans add an 'S' to LEGO?
The issue is not the building blocks themselves, but the serious lack of coordination skills on the part of the children.
If you can't get a couple of blocks to snap together, how are you going to deal with tying your shoes?
I spent the better part of my kids' preschool years teaching them things like how to tie shoes, using a laceboard. Only problem is, they've never owned a pair of shoes that they've had to lace up. Shoes, ski bindings, ice skates/rollerblades etc... they all come without laces now. I doubt my kids remember how to lace/tie a shoe these days -- eventually they'll probably have to learn again, but maybe not. Laces might just die out except as an oddity; kind of like they have with dresses, pants, and other clothing.
For that matter, most people don't know how to use cuff links anymore either.
And it's not just lack of coordination; these kids know how to swipe a touch screen to pixel accuracy, so their small motor skills are definitely there; it's their tension/pressure skills that are lacking. As such, if they ever found a pair of laceup shoes, they'd probably have no difficulty tying them as instructed by their tablet's "101 knots" app.
The kits that used to be just a random collection of bricks are a lot harder to find today. Head over to Toys-R-Us and almost all of it (other than big blox things for toddlers) are specialized kits. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc. The lego kits we had in the 70s or 80s just aren't common at local stores.
If you're buying Lego from Toys-R-Us, you're doing it wrong.
Let me introduce you to http://vip.lego.com/ -- you can even order the pieces on your tablet.
The older lego kits are still there. You can get Educational Lego (which is the basic bricks), Space Lego is now Star Wars Lego (same stuff, just rebranded with some star wars specific pieces added), medieval Lego still exists, although they've changed the coats of arms, and Lego City still exists and is growing in parts selection.
And then, of course, there's http://www.bricklink.com/ and http://rebrickable.com/.
After that, find your local Lego store, and get your missing pieces by hitting the pick-a-brick wall from time to time to get the pieces when they come available at a discount (you fill a slurpee-sized cup with whatever you want for a fixed price).
I thought that was banned in the Geneva Conventions.
Required reading for internet skeptics
He doesn't know about the wedge shaped wing ramps. He must be just out of the CryoPrison.
See previous comments; the LEGO piece catalog stabilized around a decade ago. All they do now is stencil new artwork on them for "themes".
Also, LEGO can be used for building more than just models -- it can be used to create murals, signs, pencil holders, support equipment for other toys, etc. -- by the way, ornamentation on landscapes is what those little 1x1 bricks are really useful for; they add texture and color.
It still bugs me that there are a few places where they could have designed geometries that would be "legal" connection locations, but didn't -- like the interior of modern wheel hubs, the slots in modern antenna bases, etc. But the tolerances are quite simply amazing... just look at Megablocks for someone who tried to duplicate it and didn't quite get there.
The toy is called Lego. They are Lego bricks if you like, but the toy itself is not plural.
It also invovles a similar set of mechanical motions to open as a swipe to unlock interface.
It is the same singular or plural.
In a podcast I listened to recently, I'm pretty sure it was one of the Planet Money ones from within the past year or two (I started with the very beginning of their feed several weeks ago and am close to catching up), they talked about how the LEGO molds have markings (possibly numbers, I forget that exact detail) so you can tell in EXACTLY which mold and which location a particular piece came from, so that if it didn't come out properly, you can find/fix the mold.
BTW, you realize that even though the kit may be for a specific Star Wars vehicle, you can still use the various parts to create whatever you want?
Also, while I too somewhat bemoan the "everything's a kit, not just a bunch of plain LEGO" (though I know you can still buy plain LEGO), from the same podcast I mention another response (likely a Planet Money podcast), licensed properties basically saved LEGO, because cheaper plastic bricks were undercutting them (even though theirs do apparently actually stick together better, as someone else mentioned).
The instruction booklet....
Use Your Imaginiation kid!
This is the Planet Money story about LEGO.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...
As opposed to $40 for an action figure that requires no building at all and often has arguably less features / playability than LEGO?
I didn't say it was useless. Just that it is maybe less useful than other parts. Given a usefulness metric for Lego parts, one of them is going to be at the bottom of the stack. What do you think the most useless Lego part is?
Seeing as we have cases full of 20 year old legos that work just fine, I think "overpriced" may be the wrong adjective here.
A tablet offers 'instant' gratification with a low learning curve and only requires minimal dexterity. Bored with that app? Here's another.
LEGO requires patience, spatial reasoning and planning, imagination and dexterity. Bored with those blocks, well, you're going to have to wait until your
next birthday. Can't fit the blocks together? You're going to have to keep trying until you get the hang of it. Can't find that yellow block you need to finish your duck? You'll have to keep digging around in the big pile until you find it.
You can see why kids spend more time on tablets right? It's laziness.It's easier. Effortless. Also, lazy parenting. Especially when kids are small they need a bit of help from mum and/or dad with LEGO and building blocks. Don't need much help with a tablet...
I'm lucky, both my kids love LEGO, but I still have to monitor how much time they spend on the tablet.
My youngest son is nearly 2yrs old and loves the CITY LEGO trucks, and watching his dexterity improve just from playing with those and pulling them to bits is nothing short of amazing.
Also, what they fail to mention here is that building blocks are not for all kids. Some kids just don't get it. Just not interested. And that's got nothing to do with modern technology because I saw that lack of interest in some kids more than 20 years ago.
Last but not least, there's been a big fuss in the media here (NZ) about kids going to school and lacking the dexterity to hold a pencil, being unable to recognize their own written name, etc. From memory technology got the blame as well. Not enough time spend interacting with mom and dad.
>you build one time that takes an hour or so What madness is this?? You build the set one time following the instructions because that's what's on the box. Then you destroy it and use its parts in whatever else fantasy mashup constructions you want. That's the true genius of Lego, and it's capacity to educate and inspire kids - giving them a system in which they can build their own ideas.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
and it isn't lego's either.
Just sayin'.
Just to let you know .. from the children's point of view you are the cool relative
My kids play most often with their bristle blocks. I have a 3.5 and almost 7 year old. They build stuff with the bristle blocks and include their other toys, things like corrals, roads, houses, etc. They're much more useful and fun than just legos by themselves. Even my 11yro gets involved as well.
"Oh, you should see him use the iPhone!".
He uses an iPhone?! I'm sorry to hear that, I didn't realize he had brain damage.
My parents had me on technic sets before I hit third grade.
I gave my nephew his first Technic set for his 4th birthday. He looked and the box and it said "8+", and he said "You know, I'm only four!" He wasn't long figuring out how to build with it though.
LEGO is very good for your kids brain. The more they play the more creative they are. Gadget now really spoil the children. It does more harm to them.So, don't let our kids to spend most of their time with gadget.
Nearly 40 years ago one of my kids' Kindergarten teachers told me she was getting more and more kids in her classes that didn't know how to hold a pencil or how to use a crayon, and couldn't handle a simple over-sized 6-piece puzzle. Also more and more of the boys were just running out the door to pee in the yard instead of using the bathroom.
..but what they repeat even more is the notion that people have always been saying that and that people truly haven't changed for the worse (only for the better oddly enough)
Despite astounding proof otherwise and the the fact that the past 100 years are nothing like the previous 10.000.
The difference being the incredibly successful and well reviewed lego movie is backing the lego movie sets.
I'm not sure you can or should rely on kids not being interested in them the way perhaps the themes you mentioned. Both my kids want multiple Lego movie sets...
Very good point. And while we're ranting about modern society, let's expand your point a bit. Together with patience, thinking also went out the door for most people. Everybody bases their opinions on what they 'feel' these days, without bothering to think their feelings through or looking at things from different angles. Even scientific facts are considered just opinions by many. It's hard to get young people to think about certain things, especially when those things are outside their world and the things they are interested in. And when they finally get their brains in gear they are distracted by their phones beeping all the time announcing new tweets and Whatsapp messages and whatnot.
-- Cheers!
You forgot to mention that 40 years after manufacturing the pieces still do their job just as well as when they just came out of the box. That is truly amazing.
-- Cheers!
That is false. LEGO refers to the brand/trademark/product. Like I already said, the company officially refers to individual units as "LEGO (R) pieces" and "LEGO (R) bricks". Any usage of LEGO to refer directly to the pieces is colloquial shorthand and pluralizing is perfectly acceptable. "I like to play with Legos", which is short for "I like to play with LEGO bricks" is just as acceptable as "I like to play with LEGO", which is short for "I like to play with the LEGO product".
Megablocks are not LEGOs... proper LEGOs... LEGOs... LEGOs... LEGOs...
Disclaimer: I am Danish
And you don't use LEGO as a mass noun? For shame!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Yes, today's children have the hipster-given right to grow up as gelatinous blobs, incapable of any physical activity beyond the minimum required to work an iPad.
Ignorant ass hat.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
As a parent of a 7 month old...
"Teachers whine about not being able to use the teaching methods they were taught to teach, to teach children who now have skills they themselves do not"
I use mine as a cutting board.
what do you mean by spot colour?
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
There are no Legos. /rant
LEGO is a plural and singular like sheep. Why are people incapable of understanding a word can refer to one or multipule of something.
Lego skills are very useful for engineering. I've been in software development 30+ years and still apply skills I learned from lego, lincoln logs, and erector sets in the 60s and 70s. You can use these sets to build almost identical looking structures in many ways . Some will fall over when you barely touch them. Some can be rolled and even tossed a short distance without falling apart. Software is the same. You can put classes together to make a robust & stable system, or use similar classes to make a similar looking fragile system.
An understanding of structural stability is the biggest lack I've seen in developers the last 10 years. Non-software engineers are generally better than software engineers right out of school because the physical engineers got some understanding of structures in school. You can't test stability in. You need to be aware of it in all phases - design, throughout implementation, and finding root causes when there are problems rather than just fixing the bug (which needs to be fixed but may or may not be the root cause).
Right? It's bad enough that American's feel the need to put an S at the end of Lego to start with (think: sheep / sheeps), but an apostrophe??? I despair for humanity.
Mega-Block is a parallel to Minecraft. The size of the blocks irritates me. I've seen some more recent games in development that allow multiple sizes of blocks. Those will be the better system. Minecraft is "fine," but the ball has been dropped and is being picked up slowly by other indie developers.
Being one of those "indie developers," I feel the need to spam about my own effort at smaller blocks, Multiplayer Map Editor. Just prepare yourself to be unimpressed. The game has existed for years yet basically has only one active player. ...and to be honest, I have no idea how he keeps himself amused. I feel like I'm punishing myself every time I start it up just to see if anything is happening.
More to the point of the discussion, those smaller blocks aren't all you'd imagine they are. In my experience with this game, if I were to make suggestions to someone thinking of writing a similar game, I'd suggest they stick with the standard size, or at most cut it in half. I'm not sure I'd do the same if I were to start over with the game, but I'd definitely have to consider taking my own advice on the issue as it would be kind of silly to ignore what I learned the first time.
First of all, essentially no one actually wants smaller blocks. Even those who think they want smaller blocks don't want smaller blocks. If you actually want the ability to add more detail, what you're really looking for is something like Blender which, despite the steep learning curve, is perfectly usable if you're willing to spend a few weeks watching these tutorial videos. My nephew used to play my game, and liked it since it was detailed enough that he could build complex objects like tanks, and he'd actually look up measurements on the internet to make them as realistic as he could. Then I taught him how to use Blender. Building with blocks just isn't good enough for him anymore. I don't blame him since I also never built anything in my game after I learned to use Blender. Using blender is simply more rewarding when you look at what you get vs. the time you put into it.
So your players consist entirely of people who don't want to learn Blender. ...but that isn't all that they don't want to do. They're also not fond of measuring anything. So their ceiling heights are entirely random because you can't just eye-ball 24 blocks, you have to use the measuring info box that the cuboid tool provides, but first you have to know that ceilings should be 24 blocks tall. So how do you know that? Well, I provided a tiny example house, with proper measurements for ceiling height, door height, door width, chair height, etc., but no one takes the hints. They just build whatever they want. Then it looks awful and they lose interest and they go back to playing Minecraft. ...but again, I can't blame them. I use the measuring tools and what I build looks awful too. I tried building a full-size house and only got half way through before deciding I really didn't give a shit.
The only time I really built anything that looked interesting was early in the game's development when I needed a properly-sized house to verify that everything was sane (you can't really judge your speed or height above ground when you're looking at a flat surface and nothing else) and so I found blueprints for a house on the internet and drew a grid over them at the scale of the blocks in the game. That turned out nice and was rather impressive. It's been all downhill since then, particularly because I've never since found a freely available blueprint for a house on the internet.
The performance implications of smaller blocks also cannot be i
...which is why I know what to look for on the box. The web site doesn't mention what blocks you get, but some kind person listed them in their review:
This is what you get for the money.. 132 1x1, 224 1x2 (that is 356 of the 650 pieces) 136 2x2, 36 1x3, 36 2x3, 26 1x4, 39 2x4, 10 1x6, 3 2x6, 6 1x8, and 2 2x8. Nice mix of colors. White, blue, red, and yellow were the only colors with pieces larger than 2x4. Wish LEGO would sell more larger pieces in their sets.
So you pay $30 for a set and you can probably throw away 100 of the pieces because you'll never find a use for that many 1x1 blocks. just imagine what you end up with if you buy multiple sets because for some reason you need more than 39 pieces of 2x4. Buy ten sets so that you have a respectable collection of 390 pieces of 2x4 and you've now got 1,320 1x1 blocks. What the hell are you going to do with all of them? Maybe you can melt them down and turn them into the 165 pieces of 2x4 they should have been to begin with. ...or, no, most likely you'll end up using them as kitty litter.
Then there's all the 1x2 in the set. You can build a wall with the 1x2 that is almost three times the size of a wall built with the 2x4 included in the set, which explains why I remember suddenly developing a fondness for walls built from 1x2 after I bought my sets.
Last time I looked it was rather easy to purchase exactly the blocks you want, and there didn't seem to be any mark-up for the custom sets vs. an off-the-shelf set. I guess their machines that put the sets together have access to all of the blocks and so a custom set isn't a big deal. So if anyone is going to buy Lego, I'd recommend they go that route since, while it is still expensive, at least you'll only pay for what you can actually use.
But I can barely use a pen any more due to spending all my time at a keyboard. When I find myself in the rare situation of having to write things out manually, my hand is cramping after a page.
Please define "organic food."
All food is organic, because our metabolism is organic chemistry.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I have 2 boys, 3 (in june) and 7. They both have tablets but only for boring moments or long trips in the car. They both enjoy the 80lbs of lego we have, but now that the good weather is returning, my 7yo is gone outside all day, and my 3yo is out for at least a hour. I just bought my 3yo his first bike last night, he will get it for easter. Parents cant use TV and various devices to solely entertain their kids. My not quite 3yo knows his ABCs and can count to 15... I do credit that to educational games and videos (though we do encourage the development by singing with him too). I have honestly been considering getting my 7yo a very limited function cell phone, for kind of a new age yelling though the neighbourhood looking for your kid. My finacee is very nervous about letting our first out of her sight It has its benefits and pitfalls.
This is no different than people saying TV is bad and is ruining kids (which is true to some extent if you let your kid sit in front of a TV all day) which is nothing new.
The problem is parenting.
If you let your kid spend all his time (insert "watching TV" or "using a tablet" or "playing video games" or "reading comic books" or etc etc) then you're going to have a problem.
Same thing if you let him only eat his favorite food ("mac and cheese" or "drink sodas" or etc. etc..)
Everything is about balance and variety.
My kids get a little bit of game time on the iPad, and afterwards they frequently act like a drug addict who can't get another fix. And so we explain to them, a little bit is fun, but now its time to do something else. Shortly later, they are playing lego, or kinex, or drawing, or experimenting with random crap they found around the house, or gardening, or running with the dogs, or... and with just a little guidance and interaction from mom and dad they will do most of this on their own.
The problem is not , the problem is lack of parenting.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
If you actually looked at the kits, you'd see that yes, there are some specialized pieces, but the majority of the licensed kits are made with the same basic bricks as every other Lego kit.
Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.
The article's title is just sensationalizing- the article says "blocks", not LEGOs. Years ago when the literacy campaign went overboard, preschools and kindergartens limited or eliminated blocks to make more time for literacy. This meant the the kids were spending more time on reading skills they were less likely to be developmentally ready for, and less time on spatial relationship and physics skills they were ready for, and those are the foundations of math skills.
Decisions were and are being made based on someone's desire to get their name on the 'latest' trend instead of what is correct for the kids.
Kids ENTERING nursery school may not have been exposed to building blocks at home. Not because parents are getting them an ipad INSTEAD but because just not every household has blocks. I didn't have building blocks at home when I was a toddler. I didn't have an ipad either, as the ipad was released more than 20 years after I entered school.
You can't expect a kid to be able to use something the first time they encounter it. But of course they can use a tablet if they have already figured out how to use it or something similar. Could you use a bandsaw the first time you entered a hardware store or shop class? Was your lack of ability to do that based on the fact that you used a computer?
And of course once kids know there is something fun they could be doing it's hard to keep them sitting down doing something boring instead. It's like letting someone have sex for the first time and then saying "Now you have to sit here and listen to church sermons all day instead of having sex. Sex is still out there, but you can't do it." and then being surprised when the person would rather be having sex than sitting there listening to church sermons.
Nursery school and kindergarden use to mean playing for most of the day. Even elementary school students use to get a few hours a day to play. Now we force toddlers to sit inside all day, force kindergarteners to sit still all day in school and then do homework at home. We replace recess with cramming for standardized tests. The problem is not technology, it is lack of letting kids run around and be kids for a few hours every day. Even adults that are forced to work constantly get irritability and lack of control - why are we expecting kids to be any different? Why are we expecting kids to instinctively know how to play with things just because we already learned to play with them? This just in: kids are humans.
As I said, it's no more correct using an 's' to pluralize LEGO than it is to pluralize words like sheep... other examples of such words are deer, moose, swine, and aircraft. Putting an s on the end is gramatically incorrect, the word is both singular *and* plural. (most correcty, in fact, LEGO, when not being used to refer to the company itself, is actually a mass noun, and is comparable to words like 'snow', where the notion of "pluralizing" it doesn't even make any sense).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Making a small area a different color. For example, a transparent 1x1 plate on the side of a 1x1 block with a peg on the side is commonly used to model a headlight on a car.
... Leaving aside the irony, of course, that the above post itself is rather full of gramatical mistakes (most notably, a spelling error, and inappropriate usage of commas), I'm still correct about the issue of whether or not it is acceptable to use 's' to pluralize lego. (accidentall hit the submit button instead of preview)
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm a competitive fencer and coach fencing. One of the issues we have to deal with is that all too many children and teens do not have the physical dexterity/agility that one should expect. As a result we spend a lot of time playing games whose sole purpose is to get the student to be aware of their own bodies. They can't run, throw, or perform many physical activities at a level you would expect of children at their ages. They quite often do have very agile thumbs and hand eye coordination suitable for playing playing electronic games. I haven't seen any studies on the matter but suspect that this will follow into later life. If you don't develop physical skills as a child will you be able to catch up in later life? Way too much computer game time and home schooling are my two biggest concerns with current pedagogy practices.
Cursive writing is no longer being taught. Too old fashioned I guess. Not sure how that will play out for contracts.
My first big purchase as a kid was a technical Lego set. It was the car with the working gearbox that you built yourself. Modern Lego looks like it was designed for the special ed crowd.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Yes, very true, today's Lego is set of special items that are difficult to use in other structures. .. and about parents... it's not entirely about missing interaction. it's also about complicated and sofisticated toys in great volumes which do not force the child to use its best imagination to make it "living". And even if yes, there comes another toy next or overnext week and the relation is gone :(
You need to stop using glue.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."