Get Involved with LEGO’s Build the Change

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Today on the blog we’re talking about LEGO’s fantastic new online initiative called ‘Build the Change’. LEGO’s Build the Change focuses on encouraging children (and their caregivers) to get involved with changing the world for the better, one LEGO brick at a time.

Get Involved with LEGO’s Build the Change

How Does Build the Change Work?

To get started you need to head to LEGO’s Build the Change page, create an account and then you can begin your journey with your child. Build the Change guides you through the challenge with Linda and Leo, two fantastic LEGO character guides. Their videos are really informative, and nice and snappy, so children (and adults!) won’t feel overwhelmed.

As you navigate your way through the videos and information clips, your child will be asked to undertake some creative tasks. In between these tasks are really informative bitesize clips, explaining the current problems within the world, focusing on the environment and the wild animals affected by climate change.

The concept is really lovely, ranging from hand drawn challenges to creating a LEGO solution to your chosen problem.

The Importance of Play in Education

If you know us already, you’ll know we are HUGE supporters of play. We feel play is valuable for any age, and we believe it creates a deep imagination and nurtures understanding, much more so than any other learning tools. Play is so essential, and George and Molly are encouraged to play, explore and imagine every single moment of every single day.

LEGO have always been advocates of play, and their new platform, Build the Change, is focused on getting creative and having fun, whilst also thinking about the environment, climate change and biodiversity. Play can be such a useful tool for talking about big picture problems, and often children grasp these concepts much faster than us oldies!

Our Build the Change Challenge

We had so much fun exploring the programme, and George and Molly really enjoyed the clips and information within each part. It definitely has the right balance between information, engaging tasks and fun, and we loved watching it together as a family.

The first step to take is to choose the problem that concerns you the most. We were able to choose from:

• Lack of green spaces
• Lack of recycling
• Use of non-renewable energy
• Poor air quality

Molly opted for lack of recycling, and we delved into the challenges together. Once we’d worked our way through each stage, we were given our main challenge:

‘Choose any wild animal that is being affected by climate change. Build something that will help them overcome a problem in their habitat caused by climate change. It might be a solution to help one of the animals we have looked at today, or another wild animal that you care about. Take a quick look at some Top Tips!’

We couldn’t wait to get started, so we headed into our LEGO world and spent a good hour or so creating a beautiful animal park with a recycling area and no vehicles allowed! We felt this represented something that would encourage wildlife and recycling, as well as cut back on carbon emissions.

Molly created the whole area, whilst I dug into boxes for trees, and the result is simply beautiful…

We are so chuffed with the final creation, and Molly loved creating it and later playing with it.

Conclusion

LEGO’s Build the Change is a fantastic platform that allows the following:

• Caregivers to connect with their children over important topics
• Children to express their hopes and dreams for the future world using play as a tool to share their imaginative creations
• Children and caregivers can explore important topics such as climate change and the environment through the medium of play
• Children to have a voice to imagine, share and inspire others
• Children to explore creative play, even if they don’t have LEGO at home (pencils and paper are just as valid)

We had so much fun, and we think this will lead to more big picture conversations through the medium of play and LEGO. It’s definitely a creative outlet that feels positive and impactful when it comes to the planet. We were so proud of Molly for creating something so inclusive and positive, making way for the natural world and rejecting the concept of anything that causes damage to the planet.

So, if you’re keen to create and play, and change the world at the same time with your children, head on over to Build the Change and have fun!

We’d  like to say a huge thank you to LEGO for creating this platform, we found it positively inspiring.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!