All I Really Need To Know…

I have played with Legos all my life.  I can remember when I was 7…my mom and I playing with Lincoln Logs and the glow-in-the-dark Legos.  I eventually moved on to Lego Robotics and Knex.   I have passed this love off to my three boys and integrated them into my classrooms (as a teacher).

All I REALLY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TEACHING

I LEARNED FROM A LEGO

Authentic, Application

Build, Bridge, Brainstorming

Creative, Connections, Colorful, Communities, Cooperative, Constructing, Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Communication

Design, Differentiated Instruction, Deductive Reasoning/Thinking, Dimensions

Explore, Experiment, Educational, Engage, Excitement, Enrichment, Enhance

Fun, Fall/Flip/Flop/, Flexibility

Games, Geometry, Groups, Growth

Hands-On, Higher-Order Thinking, Hypothesize

Innovative, Inquiry-Centered, Interfaces, Infrastructures, Integrated, Inductive Reasoning/Thinking, Integrate

Joining, Justify

Knowledge

Life-long learning, Logic

Math, Measurement, Manipulatives, Methodology

Networking

Orginality

Play, Purpose, Proportion, Problem-Based, Project-Based, Passion-Based, Problem-Solving, Process, Prior Knowledge

Quality, Quantity

Real-World, Resources,

Science, Shape, Size, Simulation

Technology, Thinking, Transformational, Team, Teaching,

Units, United

Visual-Spatial Intelligence

Whole

X-Box

YouTube (Legos)

Zip, Zoo

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN

(a guide for Global Leadership)

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

  • Share everything.
  • Play fair.
  • Don’t hit people.
  • Put things back where you found them.
  • Clean up your own mess.
  • Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
  • Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
  • Wash your hands before you eat.
  • Flush.
  • Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
  • Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
  • Take a nap every afternoon.
  • When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
  • Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
  • Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
  • And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

[Source: “ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN” by Robert Fulghum.  See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com/  ]

Educational Power of Lego Brick

“Lego is a range of construction toys first created by Ole Kirk Christiansen in the 1940s in Denmark. Beginning as a set of stackable, interlocking blocks, Lego has evolved into the company’s global flagship product of colorful plastic pieces that can be assembled and re-assembled in infinite ways. The blocks are so popular with children that LEGO has designed educational products and curricula, and teachers are using them in their classrooms. ”

(The infographic below brings to light the uses of LEGOs in education as well as a brief history of Lego Bricks).

The Learning Power of LEGO