My Brickology Experience!

Brickology  is a class that Beth Weis (A LEGO professional) runs. Beth has been sponsoring my LEGO project and has been an excellent resource for my project.

The concept of the class is to encourage kids to build with each other, learn from each other, use their creativity and to have fun. I wish I could have taken a class like Beth's when I was a young boy, because it is simply awesome. Every week we work on a different project with the kids, and every week the project we work on is cooler than the previous one. Beth's class is great, because through helping her I have witnessed firsthand some of the amazing things that LEGO can do.

The sphere that we made!

During the first week, we taught the kids how to build little LEGO spheres. I thought this was a great project, because it was certainly challenging for the kids but they learned from each other when they struggled. Some kids even learned a little bit about geometry during the project, as one boy realized "Wow! We're turning cubes into spheres!" The kids were amazed when they all had their own little spheres.
I think the coolest thing about the sphere project was the fact that it introduced the kids to some of the really cool things you can do with LEGO once you manipulate the way pieces can go together. The kids were visibly curious about how on earth the sphere was made, and how we "got the bumps to point in different directions." Not only young kids, but a lot of people don't fully realize the possibilities that a simple 1x1 brick with a stud on the side can present.

Working on the tower

For the Second week , the project we worked on was the signature Brickology project-- building a "tower", or large circular wall, out of multicolored 1x8 bricks. Beth and I constructed the circumference base, and then the kids came and puts the bricks on top of each other until the tower was taller than they were! It was a thrill to see how excited some of the kids were about this project. Once the tower was completed, we took some bricks out from the base to allow the kids to crawl through and go inside, where we took a picture of them all. This "tower" project is Beth's signature project since she does them at birthday parties and events, as well as at her classes. She usually writes a word or two in the tower using bricks.

To see pictures of all the different towers she has built (with what seems like a million different names), follow this link: http://www.bethweis.com/pages/event-pictures.php

The third week was the most fun of all the projects we've done so far. Beth and I brought two LEGO tubs full of large, modular castle pieces. There were also a lot of flower bricks, columns, fences, and harry potter-style castle roofs. The kids all built their own castles, and they all looked really extraordinary. According to Beth, you really can't go wrong with this project, as the kids love building gardens for their castles and building castles in general. While they all looked great, and they were all very symetrical (these are kindergardeners we're talking about!) there was one castle that really stood out. What wowed me was how the kids decided to make a "pond"... which was to take all the blue flower pieces and fill a hole in the base with them! I was super impressed with the creativity and enthusiasm all of the kids had while building the castles.

Overall, helping Beth has been a huge amount of fun. It has also been very insightful for experiencing firsthand how kids use LEGO to develop creativity, experiment, and have fun with one another.

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LEGO ETHS- The Design Process

I am building my high school (Evanston Township High School) out of LEGO. If this is your first time reading my blog, heres an overview of what my plan is:

like I said earlier, I'm building a LEGO model of my high school. I plan to buy the digitally design the model, buy the pieces and construct it. When completed, I wish to donate the model to my high school. At first, the model was going to be the entire school, and to be built on a very small scale. (ETHS is an enormous school, so the final product would still have been quite large.)

My intention was for the model to be built on a very literal, yet small, scale similar to the Adam Reed Tucker's LEGO Architecture sets.

A screenshot of the design idea I
scrapped in favor of the Minifig model.
The most developed part of this
model is the section I ended up choosing
to build on Minifig scale.

A bird's eye view of the High School
(image courtesy of Google Maps)

However, after a little while designing the school on that scale I decided to change my design entirely. I started a new minifig scale model (on the same scale as a LEGO man) of the high school.

Since the school is so big, i'm only really to be able to build the front part of the school on minifig scale. Thats fine with me though, because the front is the most iconic section of the building.

The portion of the school I will be building on mini-figure scale.
The final model should be roughly 66 studs (lego bumps) wide and
48 studs long. 

                            
                            
                            

   While designing, I had to think about the amount of pieces I was using. I didn't want to create a design that would end up being a fortune to pay for (my current budget is supposedly estimated to be around 1500 dollars). Budget details are still being figured out.

   Another thing to consider while designing is the issue of making sure everything can be not only built but supported when constructed in real life and not on a computer.

My progress as of March 4th, 2014.

I've been doing a lot of de- and re-construction on the model to make sure everything is solid and supported by pillars.

The reason the model is split in half in the image on the left is because I figured the school is largely symmetrical, so to save time and simplify the design process I'll just work on a single half and order double the pieces when finished.


That's it for this update. I'll be taking lots of screenshots as I design (and pictures as I build) so expect more updates on the project soon!