STEM LEGO Camp: Creating Mathematically Focused Scholars

This summer at STEM, we featured our first two weeks of STEM LEGO camp. Our LEGO Camp featured a multitude of dynamic and challenging LEGO-based building projects for our scholars. These projects included building LEGO houses and airplanes with running propellers. Our STEM scholars even spent time creating their own LEGO mazes, which they then navigated and solved by rolling marbles through each maze.

While building with LEGOs is a fun and creative outlet for children, it also can be an incredibly beneficial activity that stimulates early childhood development across multiple growth areas. Many early childhood researchers have found that children can strengthen their skills and aptitude for math, science, and computing by engaging with LEGO. As a result, to develop these kinds of skills in young scholars, our students must be exposed to activities that exercise the technical and quantitative parts of their malleable, still-developing brains.

A notable study conducted by researchers Charles Wolfgang, Laura Stannard, and Ithel Jones (authors of “Early Childhood Development and Play”), found that children ages three through five who were exposed to structured play with LEGOs went on to score higher on standardized testing at the high school level. The children tracked within this study also continually scored higher letter grades in their math and science classes throughout high school as well. Most significantly, the students from this study demonstrated greater scholastic achievement throughout their academics overall, even in other subject areas that were not associated with math and science.

This lends the question: does dramatic, structured play with LEGOs simply create the whole child? The “whole child” is what we define at STEM as a child that has incredibly well-rounded skills in all academic subjects. The answer is yes – based on research performed by the Scots College in Sydney, Australia, which asserts that creative play with LEGOs can nurture all areas of early childhood develop. Arina Aktova, who is their Early Years Centre Coordinator, found through her studies on this topic that playing with LEGOs not only helps children build their math and science skills, but also their social skills. As children play and interact with others, they comment about the piece they are building or ask their classmate about their projects. This establishes the foundations for their communicative skills and the ability to socialize meaningfully with their peers. These conversations encourage children to explain their ideas, describe their work, and verbalize their step-by-step process for building and exploration. At the same time, these studies indicate that playing with LEGOs provides our STEM scholars with the skills they need to become accomplished students in all areas of their academic careers, which is what makes STEM LEGO Camp such a wonderful addition to our Summer Camp curriculum. At STEM, we work tirelessly to create a whole child—a child who will leave our program with all the necessary skills to be a successful student and thought leader when it comes to their academics.

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REFERENCES

Early Childhood Development and Play:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0300443032000088212

Scots College:
https://www.tsc.nsw.edu.au/tscnews/eight-educational-benefits-of-playing-with-lego