OTS 118: Learning with LEGO: 9 Creative Ideas for Occupational Therapy in Schools

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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 118 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.

Today, we're talking about one of the most popular and versatile tools in the world of school-based occupational therapy: LEGO.

That's right, we're diving into the benefits of using LEGO in therapy sessions. LEGO provides a fun and engaging way to help children reach their therapy goals by improving fine motor skills and promoting creativity and problem-solving.

Listen to hear nine ways you can support educational tasks using LEGO blocks as your therapy modality.

Listen in wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources:

• AJOT Systematic Review
  

• Lego activities on TeachersPayTeachers.com
  

• Braille Bricks
  

• An image of activity 7 - Building from verbal instructions
  

Episode Transcript

Expand to view the full episode transcript.

Jayson Davies   

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the otschoolhouse, Comcast. Today we are going to have a fun one. We're talking about one of the most popular and versatile tools for school based occupational therapy, Lego That's right, we're diving into the benefits of using Lego bricks in therapy sessions and also in the classroom, from improving fine motor skills to promoting creativity and social skills and even problem solving. Lego provides a fun and engaging way to help children of all ages reach their goals, and it can also help us to support teachers. So I'm actually recording this intro for this episode on january 28 because that happens to be national Lego day. Why you ask? Well, it turns out that Lego, the original patent from godfred Kirk, Christiansen. I hope I'm saying that right, was actually first submitted on january 28 back in 1958 so January, 28 is now known as national Lego day. This podcast is coming out a little bit later, but I'm recording this on the 28th before we get into nine of the many ways that you can use Lego in therapy. Let me share why we are talking Lego today, and I promise it's not just because national Lego day just passed. Lego has been researched, but it has primarily been researched in the terms of social skill development and even some cooperative play. I did a quick search on Google Scholar, Asia, a few other places, and we're starting to see some more research come out related to using Lego to improve other developmental skills, but it's not quite to where it probably will be in about 10 years. There are people that are actually calling themselves Lego therapists, and they are using Lego in play to support children as occupational therapists. I think we all realize the benefit that Lego can have on things like fine motor skills, visual perception, even communication and self regulation. And we also value the occupation of play. Play impacts the development of skills and the development of skills impacts play right occupation supports skill development. Skill development support occupation also as school based occupational therapy providers, we often use play to develop skills that will be used primarily in the educational realm, things like color identification, sorting by shape, planning and building using stereognosis and visual memory to take notes while not looking down at your paper. These are all skills that play an important role in school and often are developed long before a student even enters kindergarten. But these skills have not yet been officially linked back to Lego play in research. I'm sure that's coming, but we're not there yet. So although there may not be research revolving around Lego and fine motor skills, how can you, as an occupational therapist, use Lego to build skills that your students use every day in school? Well, I've got nine ideas for you, starting with the most basic ideas and moving to some more complex, outside of the box strategies. I hope you're ready for this. I've got my bricks in front of me. I hope you have your bricks either in front of you or you're thinking about them on your school site. Let's go ahead Cue the intro music, and when we come back, we're going to dive in to nine ways that you can use Lego in therapy. Stay tuned. 

Amazing Narrator   

Hello and welcome to the otschoolhouse podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jason Davies class is officially in session. 

Jayson Davies   

All right, let's dive into Lego. Obviously, Lego is really known for building, right? You can build all sorts of things, from Harry Potter, castles to Star Wars, ships and just crazy things in the road, but before you even start to build with LEGO, the first things that kids really do with Lego, even starting with Duplos when they're a year old, is sorting, matching and understanding 3d visual spatial orientation, one of the first skills that students learn in school is to identify shapes, colors and other attributes, and since so many kids are already familiar with Lego or Duplo, what better way to do this than by incorporating their favorite block toys? You can use Lego to identify to match and sort blocks by color, shape, size, numbers of dots and more, depending on the pieces that you have available. 3d visual spatial orientation is also super important, right? The ability to understand that the same Lego can look different based upon how it's turned. Of course, a square looks pretty similar no matter what way it is turned. So. But shapes like circles or shapes like rectangles and other complex shapes that some Legos have, it is nice when students can be able to identify that shape, even when it is turned a certain direction. You can work on identifying matching and sorting blocks with various different ways, right? You can find worksheets that actually describe a block or show a block and ask the student to find that same block in a different form, or to find all the green blocks or to find all the squares. You can do that very easily. You can also take pictures with your iPad or your phone and then use those to support the student, or to say, can you find the pieces that match this one? That way you're taking out some of that language, right? If a student doesn't necessarily know what a rectangle is, you can just show them a rectangular block and say, find all the rectangular blocks. So you can start with that. There are several worksheets on teachers, pay teachers that can actually help you with this, but it's really easy just to take a picture on your tablet and go from there. Now, not specific to this first activity that we're talking about, one of the things that I love about Lego is that you can get so many of them, which makes it great for groups. In fact, that research that I discussed earlier about working on social skills, of course, that was actually used in a group. So Lego is just fantastic, because you can get so many pieces. And yes, you can do any one of these, sorting, matching, visual, spatial orientation skill activities on your own, one on one with the student. But you can also do this in a small group. You could also do this in an entire kindergarten classroom, which you know the kids are gonna love, and you might be surprised by how much the teachers love you for it as well, because you are giving them something, something new, something interesting, that you are bringing into their classroom. You're helping them do it, and then they can do it in the future. So that is our first activity, sorting, matching and understanding 3d visual, spatial orientation, all right. And the next activity that you can work on with your little ones, or even your older ones with Lego, is pattern recognition and directionality after recognizing an individual blocks, shape, color, all that good stuff. Students must learn how they relate to one another, and they do this through patterns, again, patterns of colors, patterns of shapes, patterns of designs, or even a combination of any of those. Right, you could have color, color like red, green, red, green. You could have Red Square, green rectangle, Red Square, green rectangle, or anything else beyond that, patterns are everything in the world. They are everywhere, and they help the brain to make sense of things. The ability to read fluently is facilitated by knowing and seeing patterns. The ability to count by twos, fives, 10s. It's all a pattern, right? And we can start our kids off early by making sure that they understand basic patterns. Another nice thing about using Lego to build patterns is that you can go in different directions. You can build a pattern that goes across like in a train, right? Where they're not even necessarily connected, but they're creating a long train of a pattern. You can also do a pattern where blocks are stacked upon one another, right, so it's building upwards. You could do more diagonals. There's so many different ways that you can incorporate patterns. And as you're incorporating the patterns, you can also incorporate directionality, which your speech pathologist will love you for, because they are often working on this skill, the ability for students to understand directionality terms, such as under on top of, next to in the middle. There's so many other ones, but those are some skills that you can work into your pattern building, and when your SLP walks into the room, they will be ecstatic to hear you using some of that terminology, because so many kids need that need help developing that skill. And now moving on to our third activity that you can do kids now understand after our first two activities, they understand the blocks. Maybe they know the different shapes and colors and attributes of each Lego block, and so now we can actually get to using Lego for what it was actually designed for building. So the third activity that I have for you when it comes to Lego is following visual instructions, and when you buy a Lego kit today, this is exactly what it is intended to do, right? You get a box of Legos. On the front of the box, you see a Harry Potter train, and the instructions inside show you how to build that Harry Potter train for many of our students, that Hogwarts train. Train is just going to be way too difficult, and honestly, it's more something that can happen at home than at a therapy session or in an educational setting. But you, as the occupational therapy practitioner, you know how to grade this activity up or down. Let's not start with the train. Let's start with a four block design, a six block design, and let's create instructions to building that design. Now you can probably find very simple designs on the internet somewhere where you can copy and put them on or just print them out, even put them on your tablet, or print them out and show them to your student. I personally like just to create my own abstract designs. And then I take a picture each step. Oftentimes I actually put it together completely whatever the design is. I take a picture of it. I take off a block or maybe two blocks. Take another picture of it. Take off a block or two blocks, take another picture of this. You can completely grade this up or down. You can make it very simple, or you can make it more complex for your more advanced students, and you get to choose how many blocks are in each step beyond some of the basic skills that we've already covered in activities one and two, the skills incorporated within this activity include visual spatial skills, visual memory, motor Planning and find motor skills among others, we're now identifying the block as well as taking the next step of figuring out where that block goes. So we need to really understand that 3d placement of how something might attach to something else or relate to something else. The skills used in this activity can be linked back to many educational tasks, such as learning to draw or write shapes, letters and numbers. As students get into Geometry, they're often visuals that must be broken down to find a solution. This could also be a step in teaching a student to use a visual schedule in or out of school, right? The ability to follow directions is often or visual directions, I should say, is often used in a visual schedule, right? You put down 345, visual schedule steps, and the student follows that just like they would with a Lego set of instructions. Visual instructions are used well beyond school as well. I remember one of my first jobs at Taco Bell, rather than having directions written out, oftentimes, you would find a little visual instruction out on the counter of what to do when it came to, I don't know, providing napkins and hot sauce. And then now as an adult, Ikea furniture, right? We've all been there. We've all had to put together Ikea furniture, just completely with visual instructions. No words. So this is a lifelong skill, the ability to follow visual instructions to complete an activity. Once a student has really mastered following visual instructions, we can move to our fourth activity, which is copying designs. And what that means is just removing the instructions, remove the visual instructions, and have the student see a completed object, reverse engineer that without instructions and then rebuild it. And of course, just like following visual instructions, you can grade this activity start with something small, such as a four block wall, and have them put that four block wall together. As you start to see students mastering four blocks, add more blocks, add more three dimensional items to it, right where blocks stick out different directions. It's no longer just a flat design, but it has 3d components to it. If you buy a Lego set, it will not often come with directions of this manner. You will have to do this more independently. And so again, you you build a design, take a picture of that, and then break down the blocks and give the students the blocks that they need to build that design. Another way that you can grade it up or down is to either a just give the student the exact blocks that they need, or to also include other blocks that maybe the student doesn't need. So now you're giving them 10 blocks when they only need five blocks to complete the design. This is going to promote some executive functioning skills as the student has to compare and contrast the blocks that they have available versus the blocks that they absolutely need. You can even break this down further and actually teach them to say, oh, right, let's first before we even start building let's first look at what blocks we need, and let's get rid of those other blocks that we don't need. Right? Think about on a test. When you would take a multiple choice test, there's four answers, often, maybe there's more, but oftentimes, the first thing you do is eliminate the immediately wrong answers, right? And we can kind of use that terminology to show to show a student how in this activity, we can eliminate those obviously wrong blocks to make our life a little bit easier. So. So all of this can be tied into copying designs. You could even do this that last part that I just mentioned, you could do that with the building from from visual instructions as well. But as we create more advanced tasks for our student, we are really highlighting the executive functioning skills that that student will need to develop the process. And again, what is great about Lego is that it is so adaptable that we can grade it up or down so easily. I mean, you could even remove a block that maybe is necessary for the student to create the design, and that will lead to a different learning capacity that has to happen at that point. Right when they get halfway through the structure, they might say, I need a green block. Where is that green block? We don't have it. Or do they simply use a red block instead. And what does that mean? What does that matter? How can you turn that in to a learning exercise? Now, if you ever have a teacher or a parent or an administrator ask, you know, wait, how is copying Lego related to academic skills? Well, I mean, there's so many things, right? We copy without instructions in class all the time. We constantly are asking students, whether we know it or not, to break down tasks into smaller, more manageable steps. Think about those word math problems where we're always asking students to eliminate the data that is not necessary and only focus on that data that will help you solve the problem. The ability to see a larger project and break it down into smaller items will be used throughout the student's life. And you can find a way to relate this back to an IEP goal, if you really try. I'm thinking of goals where a student is asked to do a three step action. Copying designs can lead to that three step action. I'm thinking of goals where a student is asked to complete an assignment, the same thing, right? What is required to complete that assignment, breaking it down from the entire assignment into smaller, more manageable pieces. That's exactly what we're doing when we're asking a student to copy a design, and we are just using that as a stepping stone up to the larger occupation, and that brings us to our fifth way to use Lego in therapy, and that is to take away the visual stimulus, no visual directions, no visual stimuli to copy. We are just using either our memory or building from our own preconceived design within our head, or the student is building from whatever is in their head, building from memory. We often can use letters, words, numbers, math problems, or even any other tangible item that maybe we want to build from. We can also build a design for the student, tear it apart and ask them to rebuild it again, just like with the other items, you want to start small right. Start with a four or three block design. Make sure that they can master that from memory, and then go from there. If you're going to work on letters, words, numbers or even math problems. This can be great for an in classroom activity. You can actually work on the ability to remember how to form letters and words and numbers by using Lego. Now, when you're going to be forming letters and numbers from Lego, there is no top to bottom, left to right formation right. We're not using a pencil, but we can work on that visual memory of what the letters and numbers should actually look like when we are going to build from our own preconceived notion of whatever it is that we want to build. This is actually working on that creativity side of things, even the ability to put a sentence together that can be worked on through that ability to think about what you want to build in your head without any stimuli and then building upon that. So a student might say, I want to build a giraffe, or a student might say, I want to build a car, that's perfectly okay to let them do it without another stimuli of how to build that giraffe or that car. Let them get creative. Let them figure out what blocks they need. You can even separate this out into a multiple therapy session, right? You could do this over several therapy sessions. Maybe the first week, they're just identifying maybe what pieces they think they need, and then you put those in a Ziploc bag. The next week, they come back and they create an initial design, and then maybe they realize, maybe I need more blocks, or maybe I need different color blocks, and then you move that on to the next therapy session. This could easily be three or four sessions built out with the student constantly evaluating their. Own progress and seeing how they're getting better, or seeing where they need to maybe get better, how they can adapt their own activity to make it better. If what I just said about, you know, adapting everything that you're doing and then changing it, and then adapting again, self evaluating, sounds familiar. That's because that's exactly what we do as OTS. That's exactly what teachers do at teaching right? They take data every four, six weeks and then recreate their curriculum based upon that. It's exactly what every student does when they're writing a paragraph or an essay. They're constantly trying to improve, and that is part of executive functioning and skills, and so we can facilitate that initial skill set for executive functioning by using play. I know that that's hard to wrap your head around for people that aren't necessarily OTs, but by using Lego and using play, we can start to plant that seed of executive functioning that will obviously have great implications in the educational classroom. All right, so the first five strategies or activities that I had for you were pretty basic. In my opinion, they were very similar to what you have probably done with Lego blocks before with your students for the last four I'm going to get outside of the box a little bit. I'm going to bring up some things that may be great for you and others. You might kind of say, Eh, whatever. I'm not so sure about that one. This first one, number six, is actually something that you can use to grade up or grade down some of the activities I've already discussed, or you can use it completely on its own, and that is to use stereognosis, if you remember from otschool, or maybe you use this word frequently, stereognosis is the ability to find something in your hand without using visual stimuli. So the ability to reach into your pocket and find the difference between the quarter or the penny that's in your pocket and pull out the correct coin. Well, Legos all have a very distinct feel to them, especially with the dots on top right and the size of the block, and so you can use that to develop that stereognosis ability within your student. It's very simple, right? You take a few blocks, throw them into a bag, and have the student pull out the I was about to stay to pull out the red block with four dots, but obviously they won't be able to see that it's red, but have them pull out the block with four dots and then see if they're able to find the block with four dots, or do they find the block With eight dots? That is stereognosis. And as I mentioned, you can either do this independently, or you can actually use it as a way to grade up an activity that I've already mentioned. So maybe this week, you just focus on stereognosis and having the student reach into the bag to find the block with four dots on it. And then next week, you use stereognosis to not only find the block with four dots, but also find the block with four dots and place it correctly onto the other block that it says in the instructions. In my opinion, stereognosis is a very undervalued skill, especially coming from someone who has a really difficult time typing without looking at the keyboard or even writing without looking at my hand on the paper. I really feel that stereo diagnosis is key to writing fluency, and I think the better that someone understands their hand in space and their feel on a pencil, the better that they will be able to write without necessarily looking right down at their paper. And so if you have a student with a goal to copy from the board, if you have a goal for a student to near point copy or to just right neat or whatever it might be, I really feel like working on stereognosis can move the needle for that skill. On the flip side of having a student reach into a bag and find a block that you have visually described, you could flip that around and have them reach into a bag describe the block that they're feeling and then pull it out to see if it matches what they said. So they reach in, they feel that block that has eight dots on it. They feel that it's a rectangle, not a square, and they pull it out, and then they see, oh, wait, it only has four blocks on it. That's a good way for them to visually understand, wait, I What is my hand telling my brain like they are going to get very purposeful direct feedback from themselves through that activity. All right, we are on to number seven. Now I have three more activities, seven, eight and nine. And seven is by far my favorite. It is the one that I use a lot because it incorporates a lot of the skills that we've already talked about. And. Then some we're going to be talking about communication here. We're going to be talking about the ability to motor plan without any stimuli. This is a fun one for this activity. I'm going to show you how I would do this individually with a student, and then I'm going to hopefully describe what that might look like in a group. So individually, what it looks like is I have an iPad in front of me, and on that iPad I have a stimuli of a build, right? So maybe it's six or seven pieces put together into a build. Now between me and the student is a folder so that he or she cannot see what I have on my iPad, so I have to verbally describe to the student how to build what is on my iPad. So you're seeing the communication here that is necessary. The student then has the pieces. And as we talked about earlier, you could either give the student the exact number of pieces that are necessary, or you could give them extra pieces depending on the level and how you want to grade this activity. On my end, it's extremely important that I am very intentional with what I communicate to the student. I need to make sure that I am describing the brick very well, or if I'm grading this, I can describe the brick a little less well and see how the student can do, or I could intentionally withhold some of the information about a block that they need to build and hope or to facilitate that they will ask me a follow up question for more information about what block they need or where that block goes. This gets really complex, or at least it can, or it can be pretty simple, because you could use the pattern building that we talked about earlier. You could make this super simple, such as, find the red block, put the green block on top of the red block, the yellow block on top of that, and then the orange block on top of that. Wait, are there orange blocks? And they go, I'm sure there are. But anyways, it could be that simple, right? It could just be four blocks on top of the other and even what I just said really isn't that simple. If those blocks are not square, then you might see the student turning the blocks in different directions as they put them on top of the block. So when you were just trying to get a simple wall. They might have blocks pointing out in all different directions. So you can make this simple, or you can make it more complex. You could also flip the script and have them be the one with the iPad and the stimuli in front of them, and they have to give you the directions on how to build whatever it is that they're seen. Now, you might already know kind of what it is that it's supposed to be built, but still, right? You can play along, and you can ask those clarifying questions. If a student says, find the red block and put it on the blue block, you can ask, you know, wait the red block with four or eight dots, or does it need to be in the middle of the blue block or off to the side of the blue block? Does it need to stick out in one direction? Did you say it goes under or over the other block? Those are types of questions that you can incorporate and also get the student to think about what they are telling you, what are they seeing on the iPad. They need to double check that their visual spatial skills of what they're describing is what they're actually seeing. So that is what this could look like if you are working with a student one on one. Now imagine if you are working with two students at a time, and you give them the ability to take on both roles. One student is the facilitator and the other student is the builder. One student has the iPad, the other has the Legos, and they have to work together to put the build together. You can again, manipulate or grade the activity by making the build more difficult or easier. You could also give the builder the exact number of blocks that they need, or less or more blocks than they need to make the build. You can facilitate communication by the way that you set this up. I love this activity because whenever I use it in a small group like that, the students really work together as a team. They see themselves as a team that needs to get this build done together. I've never had students fight or argue and blame each other for not getting the build correctly. And at the end of the build, once both people, both of the kids, agree, you know what we're done, we got all the blocks together. Then you take down the folder and you let the kids compare what the facilitator has on the iPad in front of them and what the builder has built, do they match? And if it doesn't match, what went wrong? And how can it be fixed? This activity has just led to so much growth in my students, and I hope it will help you and your students as well. You can also do this with a third student. You could have one facilitator with the iPad, and then you could have. Two students that are builders, and none of them can see what the other is building. So now you have three or Well, three stimuli, two builds and one iPad build to compare and contrast and see what went right and what went wrong. I see this Lego activity as being the ultimate Lego activity. You are taking away the directions that some so so frequently tied together with Lego, but you're adding that group conversation, and you're working on social skills, you're working on visual perceptual skills, you're working on strength and fine motor to build those Legos. And there's just so much going on here. The executive functioning skills even are just off the chart, because you really have to think about not only what someone is sharing with you, but you have to have trust in them. You have to have empathy that they don't have all the answers, right? They only have one stimuli picture in front of them, and they don't know what you have on the other side, and then that builder has to plan out based upon what they're told about how to make that look on their end. There's just so much good things within this activity, and I really hope it helps you and your students out. If you have any questions about this one, feel free to shoot me an email. I'd be happy to kind of give you some more information, and I'll be sure to post a picture of what this looks like from when I did it on the show note at otschoolhouse com slash episode 118, all right, we are down to the last two, and number eight is to Use Lego to tell stories. Oftentimes our students have difficulty taking what is in their brain and getting it onto paper. Things get lost a little bit. But we can use Lego to help them out. We can have a student build out or draw out what they are seeing in their brain. Perhaps they draw it, then they build it, or perhaps they go straight to drawing, but that can help them to tell stories, that can facilitate their thinking of where they want to go with writing. I've had students use the little Lego people to tell a story, to create a story, and then use that story in what they're able to write down on the paper. You can either do this with a prompt, or you can do it without a prompt. It doesn't matter. It all depends on what the goal is for the student and what you want to work on. But having them use the Legos to build out a story really makes that story that's in the brain more tangible, and it makes it more fun, makes it more occupation based for them. And so I really encourage you to try that. Just give them some Legos and say, Hey, we're going to write a story. But first I want to let you build that story. You know, is there a tree? Is there a house? Are there people? Let them build that out. And then they can actually go back and forth between writing and back to their build to continue to create and modify the story as they go. And that brings us to our final Lego activity. And this is a very specific Lego activity. It's something that Lego has built out of request from the visual impairment community. They actually have Braille bricks, and so if you work with a student who's visually impaired, I would definitely recommend that you ask your administrators to purchase a set of these Braille bricks that you can use with your students. If you work with teachers of the visually impaired, maybe they already have some, but if not, you might want to let them know so that they can go out and pick up a set of their own. You can find these on the internet. I will post a link to the website at the show notes so you can find them if you need them. Also, I gotta give a shout out to Kelsey, who kind of gave me some info on these and led me to the website where you can actually purchase them. I had heard of them, but I didn't know where you could get them. So, so happy to be able to share that Lego has Braille bricks that you can use to teach your students Braille, especially if you work in a school for the visually impaired, definitely a must have. Even if you don't work in a school for the visually impaired, maybe you have one or two students that are using braille. This could be a great addition to your therapy toolkit. All right. Well, I hope you have had a brick of a time learning about how you can use Lego in your occupational therapy practice. I shared with you nine different ways that you can use Lego in your practice, and I hope at least you know maybe three or four just really stuck with you. I would love to see you using Lego in your practice. If you do after listening to this episode, snap an image, put it on Instagram and just tag me in it so I see what you did. I would love to see you either use one of these activities or maybe show me something else that you like to do with Lego. It's been a lot of fun putting this episode together. I've got a Google doc here that I'm going to save for future reference, because there's just so much good here. Be sure to check out the show notes at. Otschoolhouse, com slash Episode 118 so that you can see a few of the links that I have for the research that I talked about earlier, as well as a page of TPT links where you can find some Lego handouts and that picture of what activity number seven looked like, so that you can incorporate that into your practice. Until next time, have a great day. Use some Lego and I will see you in the next episode of the otschoolhouse podcast. Take care. 

Amazing Narrator   

Thank you for listening to the otschoolhouse podcast, for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now, head on over to otschoolhouse com Until next time class is dismissed. 

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