At Ransom District Library, we do a similar program to that at Allegan, also called Lego Club. We stopped using a theme when most of the kids wanted to do their own thing (it felt like I got out of my own way). Each gets a large baseplate and a bucket to fill with Legos, which we have arranged by color (only rules: they must put their unused Legos back in the coded bins, and they must limit their "lego people" to three or four, as these are the true currency of the Lego collection). When they are finished with their creations, participants have the option of adding a title and signature on an index card, and we put them on display in the children's area for a week or two. Almost all artists want to be recognized for their work. :-)
    Although we have bought the vast majority of our substantial Lego collection, the return on investment has been excellent. Our Friends group got us going with an initial $400 donation, and we chipped away after that.
Cheers,

Joseph Gross
Assistant Director/Youth Librarian
Ransom District Library
Plainwell, MI
jgross@ransomlibrary.org

On 11/26/2013 5:05 PM, scrotser-toy@alleganlibrary.org wrote:
Our program is simply called, "Lego Club", and it's pretty unstructured. I do begin with a theme, however I think it's really remarkable the ideas kids come up with on their own-- I like that the unstructured nature of things allows them that freedom.  In other words, hardly anyone sticks with my theme, but what they do is so impressive, I've got no complaints.  I take lots of photos which we keep in our Lego Album - for posterity (and in case anyone wants to remember what they've done before).  We also have a large selection of Duplos for smaller children, so I don't specify an age limit. For each Lego Club I assemble every Lego book in the stacks in one place to entice reading, too.

I'm always interested to discover what others are doing with Legos.

Thanks for asking, Angela.

-Sharon Crotser-Toy
Allegan District Library


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Michlib-l] LEGO Nights
From: Cari Fry <cari.fry@westlandlibrary.org>
Date: Tue, November 26, 2013 1:43 pm
To: Angela Scott <angelas1028@gmail.com>,
"michlib-l@mail.mcls.org" <michlib-l@mail.mcls.org>

Hi Angela...

We call our program Lego Read & Play.  I read a book on a story carpet to introduce the theme.  Kids spend a little while (if the want to) making a Lego to go with the theme.  ex.  Elephant & Piggie book, then they made a "Pig" or an "Elephant", then we took pics to display in the library.  (see below)




Some kids just don't want to participate in the "theme", so I don't make them.  After about 20 minutes of together projects, the kids go and make friends playing Lego all around the room.

Cari Fry
Westland Library




From: michlib-l-bounces@mail.mcls.org on behalf of Angela Scott
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2013 3:14 PM
To: michlib-l@mail.mcls.org
Subject: [Michlib-l] LEGO Nights

Hello Everyone,

The library I currently work for is thinking about starting a LEGO night and I had a few questions for public libraries that already offer these programs:

1) How did you get started, did you purchase the LEGOs, except donations?
2) Is there any structure to these programs or do kids basically just come in and play?
3) Do you have different ages come in at different times to ensure the very young children don't swallow the smaller LEGOS?


I am curious to hear about how other libraries run their LEGO nights and would appreciate any additional information they have to offer.

Thank you,

Angela Scott

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