Build, Solve, Invent: an innovative play method. What’s new in the LEGO® Education sets?

In case you haven’t realized, we are VERY excited about our new LEGO® Education sets.

We’ve been busy designing them with experts and testing them with hundreds of kids to make them as effective as possible at developing kids’ STEM skills and growing their scientific know-how. All while being as fun to play with as any other LEGO set.

So what’s been the big change around here?

It all comes down to the Build, Solve, Invent play loop – a brand-new way for kids to play and develop essential science skills to set them up for the future.

Let’s go through those steps, step by step. Too many steps? Don’t worry, there are only 3 steps. (Steps.)

Step 1: Build

Straight out of the box, kids can build at least two science-based experiments, set in locations we know kids love. From the Arctic to Antarctic and to the cosmic mysteries of the Moon and Mars.

Kids create all this using our familiar LEGO building instructions. Nothing too groundbreaking so far. Terra firma. All systems calm.

Here’s where we start to shake things up… Hold onto your Richter scales…

Each science experiment the kids have built contains a problem to solve.

Like a Mars rover with a faulty collection arm. Or a hungry whale who needs some help catching krill.

Step 2: Solve

How will your child solve the problem?

…

No, that’s not a rhetorical question, that’s us literally waiting for your kid to work out an answer. 

Our building instructions explain that they should solve the problem… somehow.

There’s no ‘one’ solution to any of these problems. There’s no single way to help the polar bear reach her cub across the ice. There’s no single way for the capsule to land on Mars. There’s no single way to fix the Moon rocket’s stability issue. There are loads!

Kids have to rely on their own creativity, trust their scientific instincts, and crack open a new bag of bricks in the set to get started.

This stage – Solving – is the hard part. And that’s a good thing.

Kids often told us during testing that they relished thinking hard with these LEGO sets. The challenge made them feel truly proud of what they created.

With the solution built, the stories within the set are unlocked to allow the play to blossom.

Step 3: Invent

Using the skills they learned during the Solve phase, we give kids the chance to design something totally unique, with a prompt from the building instructions.

This is building at its most open-ended. It works because kids have gained the confidence in their scientific and creative abilities from solving the original problem.

That penguin did reach the sea, but what happens next? The Arctic researcher did escape from the icy slope, but where’s her next mission?

The Invent stage includes another bag of random, inspirational LEGO bricks to help them get started on building their inventions. Though, of course, they can use any bricks at their disposal.

Add them all together and you get…Build, Solve, Invent!

Learning Through Play

A crucial aspect of all this is the guarantee that kids Learn Through Play. Learning Through Play is something that has underlined everything we’ve done at the LEGO Group for the past 90 years, especially at LEGO Education.

Learning Through Play is based on the understanding, backed by science, that joy is one of the most powerful ways kids learn new skills.

When kids Learn Through Play with these LEGO Education sets, they not only pick up scientific knowledge, but a bunch of 21st Century Skills.

We’ve created an entire article about the skills and knowledge kids can pick up from these new LEGO Education sets, which you can read here!

The Build, Solve, Invent play loop

To finish, let’s bring in that final word – loop. Because the next time your kid plays with the set, the whole Build, Solve, Invent loop starts all over again. And we know from testing that kids don’t build the same solution as last time.

Instead, as they Learn Through Play and their knowledge on the subject deepens, their creative confidence grows. And they come up with new solutions.

Bigger solutions. More complex solutions. Wild solutions that send the playtime in weird and wonderful directions.  Their imagination can take them anywhere.

However they handle the challenge, you can rest assured they’ll be having fun while developing their scientific skills.

Here’s the catch…

Just kidding.