Organizing Lego

I know of people who have a play "mat" of some sort (maybe a blanket or sheet) that the kids play on. When they are done, the toys/legos are on the mat, so you just pick up the mat, and clean up is done.

My grandchildren's Legos are in a large storage box. They do dump out the whole thing. You could put them in two or three boxes so that the blocks are not layerd too deep to just search in the box.

If they take more than a day on one project you could get a piece of plywood on which they can build that you can also move out of the way.

Lego does make "platforms" which are a sheet of plastic with knobs on it like the blocks have. I found a small one at a thrift store but the kids didn't like to build on it. I think it is too small and inhibits their creativity.

E.,

Have you thought of small(ish) clear plastic storage boxes? I know Target has as small as like a sandwich box, and as big as a blanket box or under bed storage size. Most are stackable, and that way you could see what's in each box and wouldn't have to make a HUGE mess just to have fun.

Melissa

Two thoughts: Designate a small blanket or sheet as the surface you and your kids always lay out first before LEGOs get dumped out. Then when it is time to clean up, you can just gather everything up by grabbing the four corners and dumping the LEGOs back into whatever container you keep them in. The idea that worked best for us though was getting a small unit from IKEA that has 6 drawers. You can put a different color in each drawer. The reason this works is that kids don't need to dump LEGOs out to see all of them because the drawers are fairly shallow, so LEGOs can't really get too buried. The unit is called Trofast and is $39.99. Each shallow drawer is $3 (deeper ones are also available).

E., I have a daycare and one whole rck with the plastic bins is for blocks and legos...They can get the tubs out and play with them..put the legos back and set them on the rack. Before i got the storage rack I sorted somein a ziplockbag for eachof the younger ones to play with and then the older kids played with the ones in the clar shoeboxes...they do work great.
The plastic tablecloth method is great for quick get-out and pick-up....I actually have a blanket item with a drawstring that gathers....you just fold it over the blocks and pull the strings and it gathers the blocks right in there. L.

I have found that the plastic storage bins that you can buy at target work wonders with lego storage as my kids love playing with legos as well. You can pretty much see all the pieces and no more dumping hugh piles of legos on the floor. Hope this helps.

We bought a big plastic tablecloth, laid it on the floor and dumped all of the legos onto the the cloth. when my son was done, it was easy to pick up the tablecloth by the corners and slide the legos back into the big plastic bin we had for storing them. It was a joy to see his creativity as he worked out design, structure, leverage and more--which would not have been available if we had things limited to access to just a few legos.

Hi E.,

We don't have a large Lego collection anymore, but when we did, I sorted them out according to the sets they went with. My youngest had a farm set, a Harry Potter set, and I can't remember the other one. They each had their own bucket, and even though when they were stored it was better to be in their own buckets, ultimately she ended up dumping them all out in a pile when she played with them all together anyway, and Harry Potter would end up living on a farm with a spaceship in the driveway(or whatever the other set was lol). Finally, I just put them all in two big tubs and stopped caring if they were sorted according to set or not lol.

So, I guess my point is to wish you good luck on finding a good system. I never did find one in which she wouldn't pull out every single one, and then I'd end up running over a few with the vacuum later.

One thing you might try is Target has those colored bins that go on their own rack thingy--there's like 9 bins. You could sort your Legos according to size into the bins. We have one of them now, but since the Legos are gone, it sorts out sets of *other* stuff.

Wish I could help more.

K. W

I taught kinder and 1st grade and had a large Lego collection. Because order is important when you have 28 to 30 little ones, I found that what worked for us was to separate a little.

First I got clear smaller shallow rubber maid containers (I like the ones at Fred Meyers, because they have clear tops:) I got the size that is like 2 shoe boxes wide.

Then we separated into categories...examples...people & accessories, flat building pieces, red, green, blue..etc. (have the kids help you pick the categories...they are way more creative then we are.) Color worked best for us, because the younger kids had trouble with three dimensional shapes.

Next, I took pictures looking down on the box of what was in it. That way they were labeled with words and pictures.

Lastly, I found that it was important for their to be a place to store works in progress. That way the kids would not just throw everything back in fast. When they were done, they could take it apart and put the pieces back in the correct container.

It did take practice and the occasional resorting (about every 8 weeks:-), but that was a learning and fun activity as well. All of my students were able to understand the system and Legos was always a favorite.

One side note, as far as a table to work on the Legos. I had Home Depot cut me some 1/2 inch plywood that was the size of one of the tables in my classroom. Then I had them cut it in half. I put hinges on it. Then I hot glued down flat sheets of Lego down. I made a huge play area for very little.

Also, Lego makes a really cool play mat that we have at home. It is neat, because it has handles and can be closed up for temporarily storing a project. My husband uses his all the time. (I got it on Lego.com for $20 at Christmas). My husband is a Lego fanatic. He has his organized by collections, some still in their original boxes. :-)

Happy Organizing