Lego Week

Last week was Spring Break in Michigan.  For us, this means that our library will be extremely busy.  While it wasn't originally planned, we also ended up with low staff last week.  This makes passive programming ideal for this type of week.  When choosing what to do, we look for a theme where we can switch out activities daily.  We WANT to be a destination spot for those who are having staycations and by having different activities, it is possible that the same people will come back multiple times.  This year we chose the theme of Lego Week.  Here's the glitch-since we were running this program at multiple locations at the same time, it was not a Lego building program.  We needed to find activities that were fun enough that the kids would still want to do them.

Day 1-Roll a Lego Minifigure
This activity was based on a game that we found online.  We simplified the rolling and put out laminated Lego minifigure shape parts (heads, hands, etc.).  We used large dice that I purchased from Oriental Trading as that way they don't disappear as fast.

Day 2-Design Your Own Lego Minifigure
For this station, we precut a bunch of Lego minifigure parts out of construction paper and added glue and crayons.  Kids glued their creation together.

Day 3-Lego Memory
We printed off multiple sets of Lego matching cards and put them in plastic baggies so families could take a set and play with it in the Children's Room.

Day 4-Lego Masks
I have a pattern for masks that I originally got from the Lego Minifigure web site, but they are no longer there.  If you go to this site and scroll about halfway down, you will find them.  We ran our patterns on yellow cardstock and had kids cut out their shapes.  We provided craft sticks that already had a glue dot at one end so kids could just stick their mask onto the stick.

Day 5-Coloring Sheets
For the fifth day, we put out a couple of Lego coloring sheets that we found online.

Wrap-Up
The week was extremely popular, despite having no Legos out to build with.  On the two craft days, we easily had 100+ kids making the crafts (when we planned for 50).  While the other days had lower numbers, I liked that they promoted family interaction with the games.  We're already on to planning our next possible passive programming week (hint-Darth Vader).

For some other great library Lego adventures, check out:

• Lego Day from the ALSC Blog
• Lego Check-Out Club from Bryce Don't Play