No matter what age you are now, you can probably guarantee that at some point in your life you have played with some Lego. Whether it’s because you’ve received some as a gift or whether you’ve helped a child build a set on Christmas day, there’s probably no other toy in the world that has touched every person on the planet in the same way Lego has and encouraged us all to build what’s in our imaginations and unlock our inner creative.
That’s why, when we were deciding what to gift the children at Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice this year, there was only one gift that we knew was right and we knew would put a smile on the children’s faces. A gift that powers imaginations and something that engineers all over the world hold up as the beginning point of their engineering journey.
Even the engineers at MiT agree.
Everyone has heard of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MiT), along with Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge it is one of the most famous academic institutions in the world. It’s also a place where we discovered this wonderful quote about Lego, from one of their students.
“Math and physics concepts are built into every Lego project. Kids can build whatever’s in their imagination and, at the same time, develop spatial reasoning and learn about structural integrity, design, and a practical sense of geometry.”
Tiffany Tseng, a graduate researcher in the MIT Media Lab
And we couldn’t agree more. You see Lego is crucial to teaching children and future engineers, even those going into the niche world of precision engineering the importance of such concepts as designing and building to scale, loading constraints, how to brace, designing around nature and tension and compression.
It’s more complex sets also aid children in understanding the basics of gears and machinery and, believe it or not, even help with such things as maths – concepts of subtraction, addition and measurements are crucial to the successful completion of any Lego build.
Encouraging creativity and experimentation
For everyone here at Kirkstall Precision Engineering, our biggest love of Lego comes from how it encourages us all to express ourselves creatively and allows us to just build what is in our heads.
The below advert for Lego sums this up perfectly – who cares what it is, what matters is that the young person who builds it has been free to express themselves and has a smile on their face at the end of their build.
That’s the kind of joy we like to bring into every project here at Kirkstall Precision Engineering. The joy of creation, of solving problems and of unleashing the imagination to solve problems and create something that adds a benefit to society and puts a smile on many a face.
We’d like to end thus blog by thanking those companies who have helped us in our Lego donation drive and the Leeds Lego store who also kindly donated some sets to our cause.
We’ll thank everyone below and update this blog as the donation drive continues.
Many thanks to: