Welcome to day 3 of EXTRA CURRICULAR CLUBS WEEK and first up this morning is James and his lovely Lego club!
Since James started his Lego club at Elsley Primary School 4 years ago, he how has around 16 children take part in Lego club every term with lots of returning members each term. He runs it for Key Stage 2 – (Ages 7-11) but now other teachers have started to run a Lego Club for Key Stage 1 children (5-7) on a separate day!
James told us recently that
“I wanted to run the club because I love Lego myself, I collect it and there are so many opportunities to be creative, learn about design and to work collaboratively. The Lego we use was kindly donated by a friend of mine who used to use it as part of his business workshops. He was retiring and living abroad and didn’t know what to do with the Lego. I said I would love to run Lego Club with it and he says today that it brings him so much joy that his Lego is bringing so much happiness and creative opportunities for the children in my school.”
I think we’d all love a friend like James’! Here at My Science Club, we are huge lego fans and even have our very own Mini Paul and Mini Bry Lego minifigs who love science as much as we do! Watch out for their antics in our social media!
We asked James more about the challenges he sets for the children, here is a summary of some of his recent favourites…
- In groups of 3, build the highest free standing tower
- In groups of 3, build a bridge that will support this car toy crossing it.
- In pairs, one person is blindfolded and must build something. They must tell their partner what they are building before they start. Their partner must keep them safe!
- All children begin to build, every 3 minutes they must stop and pass their build around to the left. The next person must add on to the build but is not allowed to remove any bricks. This continues until everyone has their original build back with them.
- Children have 5 minutes to build a mini-beast with only 2 colours and 10 bricks
- Children must build the smallest house but with the most details.
- Children must create a self portrait / a new logo for the school in Lego.
- Children must create a new board game made out of Lego
- Children work in pairs to make a meal and a drink out of Lego.
James also told us that he would love to expand his club and be able to afford some coding Lego sets, like Lego Prime so that they can build Lego robots and then program them to move. So, if you are reading this and heading off to sunnier climbs and don’t know what to do with your Lego coding sets, get in touch with James, he’ll put them to good use!
Finally, James shared a few extra top tips if you are thinking about starting your own Lego (or other) club:
- Look ahead at themes or events coming up in school or in the world so you can enrich learning through your club.
- Group the children across year groups so that they don’t just build with children they know, this will help with social and communication skills.
- If you do a Lego club, lay a sheet down on the table so the Lego is easy to wrap up at the end of the session and lift back into the box!
If you know someone like James who goes the EXTRA mile for your school’s EXTRA-curricular club schedule, then tag them on one of our social media posts this week or nominate them via email to hello@myscienceclub.com before midnight (GMT) on 8th December 2023 and they will be entered to win a full 12 month membership of My Science Club for your school! Or, if you sign up to our newsletter before midnight on 10th December, you will also be in the hat to win a membership too! Click here for newsletter sign up!
Look forward to sharing and hearing from you all this week
Bryony and Paul
My Science Club co-founders
