Spelling with LEGO Letters and How to Make Your Own!

While awake at 4am the other morning {Yes. 4am}, I was contemplating how I could combine ALuv’s obsession with LEGO bricks and my love for hands-on spelling.  As I mulled over how this could be done, an idea popped into my head. Since ALuv has a HUGE bucket of LEGO bricks (we easily have over 5,000), I knew he wouldn’t miss a handful of them!
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How to Make Your Own LEGO Bricks for Spelling

1.  I collected the LEGO bricks.  My two “helpers” assisted me in pulling out the needed LEGO pieces. {Okay, so they really built cars while I did all the work, but good help can be hard to come by these days! If I’d only been as organized as Carisa, this would not have taken so long.}

 

2.  I sorted the LEGO bricks.  The red LEGO bricks I reserved for vowels, the smaller bricks (2 x 2) I used for short consonants, such as c, m, n, v, etc.  And the 3 x 2 LEGO bricks were for tall consonants (b, d, t, l, etc.) or consonants with a “tail” (p, q, j, etc.).

 

3. I wrote the letters on each LEGO brick.  I placed all the bumps facing to the right and wrote with an Ultra Fine Point Sharpie. (Update: we’ve had our bricks for 3 years and not one letter has come off.)

I created 3 of each vowel and common consonant and 2 of every other consonant (except q and x I only made one of). When all LEGO bricks are kept with the bumps facing to the right, the b, d, q, and g will not fit together if they are turned the wrong way, so it helps to limit letter confusion.  I took it one step further and wrote all the b‘s on yellow blocks, the d‘s on light green, and the p‘s on white, just to solidify their differences.

 

Spelling with LEGO Letters

1.  We sorted the Lego letters by “shape” (short letters, tall letters, letters with “tails”).

2. I modeled how to click them together correctly so that the letters retained their “shape”.

3. I called out sight words and he built them.  These are the words he made: and, can, go, look, like, off, is, stop, the & you.

Once we got into the lesson, this reminded me of the Reading Rods I used in the classroom with my Kinders and 1st graders (only cheaper, since we already owned the LEGO bricks).

 

Variation & Extension Ideas with LEGO Letters

I knew NJoy {age 2.5} would want to be right in there with us, so I made some letter blocks for him out of the DUPLO LEGO  bricks-upper case on one side and lower case on the other.  This way MBug {almost 1 year} can play, too while ALuv’s smaller LEGO pieces stay on the table.

NJoy naming his letters. He LOVES letters!

I also created a couple of worksheets for ALuv on A to Z Teacher Stuff.  He did this one as independent work the next day.  He totally LOVED doing this! For the worksheet, he had to: 1) look at the words at the top, 2) build the words with his LEGO letters, and 3) write the correct word in each word shape puzzle. This can even make a worksheet hands-on spelling!

 

More LEGO Literacy Ideas:

•  LEGO Syllable Counting
• Counting Sounds in Words {you can totally use LEGO bricks for this, too!}
• LEGO Alphabet Matching Game
• LEGO Descriptive Writing Activity {FREE Printable Included!}

Follow This Reading Mama’s board Learning with LEGOS on Pinterest.

 

Enjoy!

~Becky