[Sandra314]

My sons love legos... they could build all the time with them, and I know there are whole curriculums using legos for manipulative's and as the basis for all sorts of learning. So aside from building with legos, what else can they be used for?

We use them for all sorts of things other than building. We use then as counters, we use them to sort according to color and size and shape, patterns and we also use them for sequencing.

You can legos for all kinds of uses:

Dramatic Play:
This is limited only by kids' imagination.

Patterning
Show your child different patterns they can make.
Red, yellow, red, yellow. Ask them what comes next?

Counting:
Show you child a bunch of single bricks for counting by ones.

When your child gets older (Pre-K to K), you can use a stick of ten legos together for counting by tens, a block of them put together on a 10 x 2 platform for 100s, etc.

We use them to count by 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s
It helps oldest son visualize these concepts.

Size/Measurement
which one is taller/smaller, shorter/longer, fatter/skinnier.
For older children: Many many bricks to I have to add to this stack to make it the same as that stack? How many bricks long is your pencil, your finger, your book, the table leg.

Geography:
With my 9 year old, we are making world flags with legos by copying the flags out of a reference book.

Tips:
Lego now has a parent area of the site. It looks pretty cool. We are having fun exploring it. http://parents.lego.com/

[T4LMama]

A couple of years ago Lego had a promotion where they sent free lego kits to teachers. Kids were supposed to begin with the exact same group of legos and build a duck or a boat or whatever. It was interesting to see what the different designs were that the kids came up with! I will definitely check out the parent section of the Lego website - thanks!

[MysticalSerenity]

sweet ideas!