Mastering Lego

Times Reporter   

  

When Bricks 4 Kidz Strathmore director Derek Donais created the program back in the summer for the area, he wanted to enhance the meaning of building LEGO to kids ages 5-12. 

He believed that LEGO could be a way of educating the kids that playing with blocks is a way of learning a science.  

Bricks 4 Kidz started down in the States and Donais had a keen interest in it and went down and took some classes.

“It’s a business that was started in 2008 down in St. Augustine, Fla. and the founder, her name is Michelle Cote, and she was actually looking to get into the schools and do Spanish language classes. They did not have an opening at the time but they did have some openings for science-based things,” said Donais. “She was an architect, so she thought she’d put together a few kits (of LEGO) and teach some classes and they sold out immediately. They had such a big demand for it; it kept growing and growing until now it’s multinational in over 30 countries.”

Bricks 4 Kidz is a program designed for kids to explore their curiosities and become creative with LEGO through specialized kits with blocks which will provide education while they build.

Donais is fairly new to the Bricks 4 Kidz, having only started it in Strathmore this past summer, and he was intrigued by how much knowledge and scientific meaning comes out of a little block.

“I just got into it over the summer – I’ve been looking into it for a number of years but I just finally decided to go with it because it was something I was really interested in. I’m a teacher as well, so it’s pretty suited to some of the stuff I like, teaching and LEGO,” said Donais. “I didn’t really realize the adaptability of LEGO when I was teaching. Now I totally see how it could be used in the classroom, especially for science and math and even social studies and language arts.”

He wants the kids to work together in the camps to put their creativeness together in the building process.

“It’s basically about curriculum learning as well as fun, educational, hands on just exploring and creating,” said Donais

He believes that the more advance LEGO became it was just a matter of marketing yourself in the community and also word of mouth.

“Just the fact that LEGO is so popular and so universal, the LEGO movie and the kits and everything,” he said. “If it’s a big movie or children’s programming, it seems to come out with some LEGO variant, the timing was right, to get out there and get your foot in the door and people start to spread the word.”

Donais is very curious about how LEGO has advanced into the high school level with some unique DNA camps that various schools have been able to provide through field trips.

“I’m really keen on looking at some of the newer elements that they developed for junior high and high school,” said Donais. “There is a really cool DNA field trip and camp, we did it when we went through the training in Florida and you actually build a strand of DNA with all the actual acids and all the components labeled.”

The Master Builder Cup is where children can showcase their skills in engineering a creative figure that will convince the judges it’s a winner.

“Basically they encourage us to do our own thing when it comes to promoting and marketing,” said Donais. “What I thought would be really neat to get out there to benefit the kids and get them interested and really engaged, was to have a contest where they can build their own creation.

“There is a number of different categories for age groups and they’ll have a few weeks to put their own creation together. They’ll take a program and complete it from start to finish so that’ll build a self-esteem and it’ll them access to what other people create.”

The designed curriculum is for kids ages 5-12 but in the future it is expanding to preschoolers for ages 3-5.

Once the Strathmore section becomes more established, then Donais will be travelling more to market in his other areas in Brooks and Medicine Hat.

The judging will take place at the library on Friday, Oct. 17 at 6 p.m.