First Posted: 2/9/2015
WYOMING — Sydney Ogle didn’t even bother to take off her coat before she started rummaging in the box of colorful plastic bricks to get her Lego project started.
“It’ll be a house,” she said, lining up a square on the platform base for her project.
By the time she finished, Ogle had four walls, complete with windows and a door, a horse figure outside, two owl figures perched above the door and four “people” figures sitting inside around a table with a Lego pizza in the center.
The 10-year-old wasn’t in her house in Kingston, but was part of a group of eight or nine children at the Wyoming Free Library taking part in the monthly Lego Club there. The club is open to youngsters ages 4 to 12.
The meeting was a run-up to the library’s first-ever Lego Build-Off, set for March 14. That will be a teamwork competition with building challenges, guest judges and prizes.
“We’ve had a Lego Club here since 2012,” said library volunteer Colleen Garrison, of Dallas, who is program coordinator. “We have had as many as 24 kids show up, but it’s usually about a dozen, depending on the weather and whatever else is going on in their lives.”
Lego Clubs are part of a growing movement that has been occurring in libraries, community centers and schools in dozens of countries for dozens of years. Children can meet for Lego clubs all over Luzerne and Wyoming counties, including in Pittston, Wilkes-Barre, Kingston and Tunkhannock. Lego is a building empire with theme parks, a magazine, video games, a movie, club memberships and a host of activities.
For youngsters, it’s a chance to use their imaginations while they create buildings and animals, spacecraft and trains. They are not aware of the skills they develop in engineering, architecture, spatial relations and geometry. They also strengthen imagination by creating their own stories about the construction and the tiny Lego figures who inhabit the block planet.
They also learn a bit about cooperation.
“Here, let me help you find that piece in the box,” said 8-year-old Luke Fuller, son of the program coordinator, to Sydney, trying to find the perfect window for one of her walls.
Luke worked on a yellow wrecking ball and tried to construct an overhead crane for it, but had to give up because of problems with physics and gravity. Instead, he converted the “wrecking ball” part of the creation into a UFO on a column of white blocks. It sat on a red star-like set of blocks that were “the explosion on the ground that happened when the UFO landed.”
“If I could make anything, I think I’d like to make a giant Lego ‘me’ that’s a robot,” he said.
On the other side of the table, cousins Evan Dweck, 6, and Alex Norris, 7, both of Pittston, stacked blocks.
“I’m just making a house,” Norris said.
His cousin kept his head down and kept working, not paying attention to the others.
“Evan always ignores me and everybody else when he’s building with Legos,” said his mother, Holly. In fact, the parents might as well have not been in the room.
Most of the children have their own Lego blocks at home, too.
Seth Edwards, 7, who just moved to Kingston from Wyoming, has a boxful at home and his own Lego table where he gets to build instead of watching TV, said his dad, Jeff.
“I’d like to build a Lego shark,” Seth said.
The Lego collection at the Wyoming Free Library was the result of donations, Garrison said
“We must have at least $1,000 worth of the blocks here,” she said. “We have had some very generous people who cleaned these things out of their attics or donated money so that we could purchase some of the blocks.”
The rules are simple: come to build with the blocks. No limits to what you can try. And put the blocks away at the end of the hour. Except, perhaps, when there’s space in the library’s display case and some of the creative Lego projects go on display for library patrons to admire.
The kids didn’t seem to have that goal in mind, however. Instead, they just wanted to put something fun together. And it was a bit of time away from home and a chance to hang out with other kids who have the same interest.
“I like to come here. I like to see what the other kids do, too,” said Ava Shafer, 5, of Kingston. She started with a building, then changed her mind and pulled a book from the nearby display of Lego books to get a new idea.
Garrison said she’s putting together challenges for the March 14 competition, designed to have the youngsters work in age-group teams for prizes. She has also invited people from the area to serve as judges and plans to award prizes for the best creations.
Anyone interested in the Lego Build-Off should call the library at 570-693-1364 for more information or to reserve a spot in the competition.
