How to Play with LEGOs

Making New Creations

Build a local landmark or a famous structure with your LEGOs. Think about some of your favorite places to go, whether it’s a museum, someone’s house, or a national landmark. Look up a picture of this place online and plan out how you can use your LEGOs to create it on your own, and start building! You can also find instructions online for how to build a lot of well-known structures, like the Colosseum in Rome and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

Use a themed set to create a new world to use your imagination. Building themed sets is a lot of fun, but you can also use those sets to reimagine something you’ve made before. For example, if you have a themed pirate set with a boat and a beach, try changing the landscape and creating a forest instead. Then you can create a new pirate story to go along with the new landscape. This activity is also really good for exercising your ability to “think outside the box” and imagine new solutions to familiar problems. You could even mix together some elements from different sets to merge worlds, like Star Wars and Hobbits.

Learn about physics by building the tallest tower that won’t fall over. Each time your structure falls, think about how you can strengthen its base or composition so that it can go higher and higher. Start by creating a wide base, and build up from there. Use square and rectangle bricks, and make sure to keep each new level of the tower even. Taper the bricks as you make it taller, so that it eventually comes to a point. You could even have a competition between yourself and a friend to see who can make the tallest one! The tallest LEGO tower today is 118 feet (36 m) tall.

Craft your favorite characters or animals out of LEGOs. Minions, cats, dinosaurs, Star Wars characters, Harry Potter characters, princesses, and unicorns—you can make almost anything out of LEGOs. Find an image you want to recreate and pick out your LEGO pieces. Make sure to match the right colors as much as you can, or go off book and make a differently color-themed character. You could even craft a LEGO world around the new character you built. For example, if you build a dinosaur you could make several more and create a jungle with trees, rivers, and huts for them to walk around in.

Freestyle your LEGO play to create something new. Part of the fun of playing with LEGOs is spreading them out all around you and letting your imagination run wild. Start building with something in mind, or simply start stacking and see what happens. Freestyling can also be a great way to clear your mind. While your hands are busy, your mind is free to problem-solve. Lots of companies use LEGOs to help get their employees thinking.

Playing with Others

Host a LEGO-themed party for a special event. Whether it’s for a birthday or just a fun gathering of friends, plan an event focused around LEGOs. Set up LEGO stations around the house—for example, you could have Star Wars LEGOs in the living room, nature-themed LEGOs on the patio, and regular LEGO sets in the kitchen so that people can move from room to room. You could also make LEGO themed foods—like a cake decorated to look like LEGOs, pizza cut into different sized shapes, and cake pops decorated to look like mini-figure heads.

Create a game using your LEGOs and mini-figures. Mimic your favorite board game, like Chutes and Ladders or Candy Land, and create a board out of your LEGOs, then use your mini-figures and other items to play the game. Or you could make up a game of your own, with a unique board and rules, that you can teach to your friends and family. Write down the rules of the game if you create one of your own—you never know if you might want to play it again later.

Race a friend in a blind-build to see who can make the highest tower. All you need for this game is a friend (or two, or three), blindfolds, a LEGO platform, and a container of loose building blocks. Set a timer for five minutes, put on the blindfolds, and then try and feel your way around the LEGOs and make the highest tower you can (that doesn’t fall over). You could also challenge each other to build other structures, like a house or a car.

Take turns taking apart a treasure tower to win a prize. For this game, you will need to have someone create the treasure tower by building a structure around a secret prize (for example, fill an easter egg with candy or other toys, and then build a large fortress around it so it’s completely covered. To play, have each person spend 10 seconds taking off as many LEGO pieces as they can. After 10 seconds, it’s the next person’s turn. Whoever uncovers the prize wins! Use flat bricks as well as regular ones, and make the tower as large as possible so that everyone gets several turns.

Organizing and Storing Your LEGOs

Separate your LEGOs by theme to keep the pieces organized. Depending on what kind of a builder you are, you may want to keep your different sets apart from one another so they’re easier to build when you want to. If they were all mixed together, it would be harder to find the pieces you need. Try some of these different storage methods: Keep them in the original boxes if they’re still in good shape. Use a plastic, resealable bag. Use shoeboxes or see-through plastic containers.

Use a large, see-through container to store un-themed LEGOs. If you have younger kids who don’t care about following instructions to create specific worlds, combine everything together in one place so that they can access all the LEGO pieces when they want to create something new. Preferably, use a container that has a lid so that pieces don’t spill out if it gets knocked over accidentally. You can even buy long, flat plastic containers that can easily slide underneath beds for an out-of-the-way storage option.

Sort LEGOs by element for easy-to-find access when you go to build. If you’re a more advanced LEGO builder, you may have upward of several thousand pieces. If so, consider separating out your blocks by elements. Generally, LEGO experts advise against organizing by color because it can make it difficult to find the piece you need. Here are the common LEGO elements: Bricks Plates Tiles SNOTs (studs not on top) Slopes Technics

Choose storage boxes with lids to take LEGOs out of the house. If you or your kids frequently take the LEGOs outside, consider choosing smaller, portable boxes. Lots of plastic containers are stackable, so you could have a series of those which would make it easy to grab whatever you need when you need it. Create a “go bag” for LEGOs that holds a handful of the basic building blocks for long car trips. Your kids can add their favorite mini-figures before you leave the house.

Use a plastic drawers set for compact storage. These normally come with five or six drawers stacked on top of each other. You can label each drawer depending on how you decide to organize your LEGOs (by element or by set). Drawers are great because they can easily fit in a closet or under a desk, and you can add more as your collection grows.

Opt for drawer cabinets to organize by element and by color. Drawer cabinets are plastic containers made up of dozens of small drawers. Label each drawer with the contents (“green tiles”, “red plates”), and keep your drawer cabinets in a closet or on top of a designated LEGO work station for easy access to all your pieces. Tackle boxes provide a similar experience because they have multiple small storage sections.