Our First Lego Minibuild

The Lego Store has a Minibuild on the first Tuesday of every month starting approximately at 5pm. It is free and they have about 250 available for kids.

The Minibuild this month was a tree with a little bird since spring is supposedly on it's way.

So we went to the mall for 5pm and were told we were in time to participate...at 7pm.

So we went home with special time cards and returned at 7pm.

See Cris in there? He wanted his own. But, he's not between the ages of 6-14, so he was denied.

But in the end, he charmed his way into getting one....

We left the Lego Store with 3 of these and a happy family.

Oh...we don't just take the freebies they offer, we also spend a considerable amount on Lego. Cris met us at the Lego Store and while he was waiting he filled up a Lego cup with the Pick-a-Brick selections. This is our 3rd cup in a week and a half.

Lego is pretty awesome!

Lego Everywhere

This week we have started a daunting task. Organizing the Lego.

We are about half done and are needing about double the bins we recently purchased for this endeavour.

Here we are with the first half of the bins...the rest are strewn about in Elijah's room:

The boys help sort for a bit, then get distracted by possibilities and start building.

They have come up with pretty cool things. What amazes me most is their stamina in looking for pieces they need. They will look and look and look for many different pieces. I'm sure I would have given up 5 minutes into their projects. They have endurance!!

Last week the Lego Store had some bricks Cris has been wanting for a long time.

These flat ones with 1-pip on the top:

We bought a large container (780 pieces of them in all) and the boys have been busy creating their own Lego games,

They have also made a little micro world of animals with the itty-bitty pieces.

I hope to get the Lego all sorted by the weekend. I want to vacuum!!

Faith and Courage

One of the most compelling authors and home educating advocates is John Holt. I have read (well...skimmed) some of his books, watched old interviews of him, and tried to glean wisdom from his views and writings.

What is really boils down to is faith and courage. In this day and age we have a plethora of resources literally at our fingertips, and many more at stores, libraries, and organizations, not to mention friends. It should be easy to have faith that my boys want to make sense out of life and will work hard at it. It should be easy to have courage to let them do it. But, it is a daily struggle for me.

I have this on my fridge:

I pray for faith and courage.