Friday, March 26, 2010

LEGO Bricks and Music Lessons?!


Have you heard about the Lego Smart Creativity Contest? I just heard about it today from a homeschool discussion board, and (though I never thought about using LEGO products in my lessons before) I think I foresee them making an appearance at upcoming lessons. I mean, how cool does this idea (taken straight from the website) look:

LEGO My Music- Rythm Study
LEGO Smart Creativity Contest Entry (SEPTEMBER WINNER!)
By Paula Augustine, Home school mom and private music instructor

Steps: 1. Give each group of 2-3 students a LEGO Smart Kit. 2. Give them 3-5 minutes to work together and line up their bricks into a rhythm composition. 3. Let each group share their rhythm composition and explain what each brick 'symbol' meant. They will need to work together to decide how to organize the bricks into length is to be played and be able to play it together when finished. I had one group use some colors as rests! Another group used dotted rhythm patterns.
Lesson Learned: The students learned to work together, work creatively, and how use symbols to communicate with the class.


Anybody else interested in entering the 2010 contest? Just visit their website here to pre-register. (The first 10,000 get a free mini LEGO kit!) I think my students and I will definitely be able to come up with some creative activities... and knowing how creative some of y'all are, I have no doubts that your ideas will be equally as great!

Leave a comment if you decide to participate, too!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for posting relevant info about this contest.

Jen said...

This looks SO fun! I had never thought of using LEGOS in lessons, but have some kids who are extremely tactile in their learning style, so the would love something like this! I'm tempted to pick some up the next time I'm at the store to experiment this summer. Thanks so much for sharing!!