A few weeks ago, we started to think through what Little Man would like to get for Christmas. We know he is very interested in the Mindstorm system, but we know that is too advanced for him. But moving parts are a ton of fun, and both the Professor and I enjoy the moving parts of LEGO® more than the static parts. And all of us enjoy watching Great Ball Contraptions (GBC), and we agree it would be a ton of fun to build one.
Instead of waiting for Christmas, we decided to start this Technic® play right away. So, we pulled out some various lift arms, gears and pins from our “unsorted used” LEGO® and had a family play session. We found we needed the basic brick to provide a base for the moving parts. The basic brick never goes out of style.
We each built some fun moving LEGO® builds, though nothing very fancy and nothing that actually does anything. But we are learning how the gears and lift arms work together, which is the main idea in all of this. Who knows if we will every get to the point of designing anything with any level of complexity. But the learning is fun, and that is a big deal.
Hopefully, we will be building a GBC before too much longer. As adults, we are finding we have to be intentional about making time to ‘play’. Isn’t that sad? How do you play?
