| Beyond Black Boxes:
LEGO Doodle |
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The process of LEGO Doodling helps open up thinking and new creations with LEGO, art materials, found objects, Crickets and other motors. It encourages kids to tinker and experiment with a spirit of playful inquiry and then collaborate with other members on their creations. This exercise often leads directly to the creation of amazing, collaborative environments.
What you need:
- LEGO - many shapes, sizes, and colors. LEGO people are very popular.
- Art materials such as colored paper, foamies, pipe cleaners, feathers, beads, cardboard, ribbons, etc.
- Optional: pre-programmed crickets and motors.
Directions for the Doodle:
This is a group activity so it is best to start with a quick introduction to the participants in the group and some kind of warm-up activity such as "Operator". (One person whispers a sentence into the next person's ear. Continue the process around the circle and have the last person say the sentence out loud. Usually the sentence is very different than it started and is funny.)
Encourage the participants to do as little thinking, planning, and visioning as possible in the early stages of doodling, because we want to find new ideas, new solutions, things created outside the usual experience. Doodling helps to set the tone for natural collaboration. And the experience of being an inventor and designer helps kids envision new possibilities for their futures.
- To "LEGO Doodle" put a big, messy pile of LEGO blocks (or other materials) in the center of a table. Have participants take a seat around the table.
- Ask the participants to pick up a few LEGO pieces that attract their attention. Don't worry about what is being built. Just fit the pieces together.
- After a timed period like 15 seconds, have the participants pass the Doodle object to the next person in the circle. That person adds several more pieces to the object.
- Repeat the process all the way around the circle. Return the object to the original Doodler.
- Have everyone look at their object to see if a title comes to mind. Share these titles with the group.
- Small groups can then join their Doodles and brainstorm about what the objects might be or become. Using art materials and pre-programmed crickets and motors, people can enhance what they have built and tell or write stories about the object.
- Sometimes when several objects have been completed, they join naturally into a related environment and a group story can emerge.
- Often these simple ideas lead to the desire to develop more complex creations.
Tips
The original materials and the tone of the instructions can influence what is built. For instance, if wheels are present, very often vehicles will be built. Miniature LEGO people tend to bring out ideas of community.
For pre-programmed Crickets and motors, attach motors to Motor Ports A & B. Write a simple LOGO program that turns on the motors, reverses direction, and turns the motors the other way. This gives kids simple motion that can be very exciting. Following the building of the Doodles, kids often want to change the programming to fit their visions.
Loop[ ab, on rd]
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