Exquisite Lego Versions of the World’s Most Famous Buildings

BECOMING A LEGO Certified Professional is a bit like becoming a master sommelier. To be inducted is to join the ranks of the nonpareil, to be a member of the 0.0001 percent with absolute devotion to mastery of one’s subject. But of the two, the cadre of Lego elite is the most exclusive. There are 147 people on the Court of Master Sommeliers, but there are just 14 Lego Certified Professionals in the world.

Adam Reed Tucker is one of them, and he has an exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. Brick by Brickfeatures 13 of his creations, each a model of some of the world’s most famous architectural works. The Golden Gate Bridge, the Colosseum, and One World Trade Center are rendered in miniature. That’s something of a relative term, here: The “miniature” Lego version of the Golden Gate Bridge comprises 64,500 Lego bricks, took 260 hours to build, and is 60 feet long. That’s as big as some of the dinosaurs on display the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Brick by Brick also features replicas of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, Shenzhen’s still-unopened Ping An Finance Center, Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch, the International Space Station, the Great Pyramid of Giza; the Palace of Fine Arts; Hoover Dam; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, and—for the kids, perhaps—the Six Flags American Eagle Roller Coaster and the Cinderella Castle from Disney World. All told, it represents 2,500 hours of design and construction work, done without computer-modeling. That’s more than one year of 40-hour work weeks. (read more)

via WIRED

8 years ago261 notes

A Guide To Finding the Perfect Online Camp For Your Kids

We think you deserve an easier, more convenient way for your kids to discover and pursue their passions and interests. We think you deserve challenges and activities that make them laugh, think, and emerge fearless to learn and to create. We’re excited to launch DIY Camps, designed to deliver the virtual experience of summer camp all year round. You can join a small group of other makers and doers and collaborate with a talented counselor who will share techniques, give one-on-one feedback, and pose challenges to grow their creative and technical skills. There’s a camp for every kid, here’s a quick guide to finding the right camp:

Your kids are interested in:

Drawing

Age: Good for ages 7-15   Camp Starts: Every Saturday

Lets draw! Join Drawing Camp to create a drawing every day and start exploring the epic world of illustration techniques. Your kids will be learning the basics of illustrations with Lauren May, a professional illustrator and lifelong camp counselor.

Movie Making

Age: Good for ages 7-15   Camp Starts: Every Saturday

Work with a movie director to learn secret tips and tricks to make your videos immediately more professional. Filmmaker Mark Cersosimo works at Vimeo and will teach your kids how to make epic movies as well as the techniques you see in Hollywood films.

Minecraft

Age: Good for ages 7-15   Camp Starts: Every Saturday

Minecrafters unite for a month of building! You’ll begin by designing your own structures above and below ground then progress to building an entire village together in your own server run by Bobby Dart, a10-year camp counselor and Minecraft enthusiast. 

Music

Age: Good for ages 7-15   Camp Starts: Every Saturday

Let’s make music with EVERYTHING! Your kids will be using household materials and junk to make their own instruments. This camp is taught by Simon Panrucker, a musician, filmmaker, performer who makes songs for Clarence on Cartoon Network!

LEGO

Age: Good for ages 7-15   Camp Starts: Every Saturday

Invent something new with LEGO® bricks every day. Your counselor and expert LEGO Master, Bobby Dart will pose a LEGO® challenge each morning to help you think outside the box. You’ll emerge from camp with 28 original creations.

Check out more camps here and happy summer!

8 years ago80 notes

Turn screen time into learning time with fantastic online camps for kids at DIY.org

by Cool Mom Tech

We’re in those final weeks of school before summer break, which means my kids and I need to figure out how they’re going to occupy themselves and keep their brains and hands active. Turns out I’m getting some great ideas from the online camps at DIY.org.

While we were all a little skeptical about the idea of camp that doesn’t actually get kids outside doing, you know, camp stuff, maybe you want to reframe this more like awesome four-week courses that can help fill in the days.

Four-week sessions focus on a topic like filmmaking, comic books, toy hacks, and Minecraft. Using the iOS app, kids can view video instructions and challenges that are posted by their counselor, post their own creations, and interact with other kids for feedback and fun. Plus they can work on their own time, so it might be a cool option after the kids get home from actual camp or other activities, and could use a little downtime on the computer with the A/C blasting.

My 10 year-old joined the Minecraft Adventure camp, and she is definitely getting a kick out of it. Her counselor is hilarious, and he’s been great at engaging the kids and responding to their questions and concerns. There’s always something new to greet her on the app each day, which means I never once hear I’m bored — two words every parent dreads.

Each session of camp is $39, but you can try your first camp for only $10, which I think is pretty awesome, considering how great our experience has been so far. The DIY app is free, but it does require iOS 8.1 or higher. That means unfortunately it’s not an option for Android users. (Read more)

Check out the online camps!:

8 years ago152 notes

How To Teach Math With LEGOs

by Katie Lepi of Edudemic

Using Legos in the classroom is not a new concept at all. There are so many different classroom applications for the popular brightly colored bricks, and despite the myriad of uses, the go-to task for Legos is most often math. The handy little nubs sitting atop the bricks offer a chance to teach things like area and perimeter, the different colors lend themselves well to fractions. 

The handy infographic below takes a look at different ways to use fractions to teach math. The visual aspect is pretty handy – you can clearly see how your students will be able to group and divide the blocks to grasp the concepts in a fun way. Do you have other math-specific ways you’ve employed Legos in the classroom?  Share your awesome ideas with the Edudemic community by leaving a comment below, mentioning @Edudemic on Twitter or leaving your thoughts on our Facebook page.

Using Legos To Teach Math

  • Fractions: Using bricks of the same size but different color, have the students count out the denominator (total bricks) and the numerator representative of each color. You can employ any size bricks for this task.
  • Area and Perimeter: Using bricks of any color, construct a rectangle or square. The students can use the nubs on top of the bricks to calculate the area and the perimeter of each shape they create.
  • Multiplication: Using bricks of various sizes (ie 4 nubs on top, 8 nubs on top), students can calculate how many total nubs there are based on the number of same-sized bricks. Thus, a group of 4 ‘size 4′ bricks would yield 16 nubs)
  • Mean, Median, Mode, and Range: Using groups of different sized bricks (ie, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1) and totaling the nubs on each group, students can calculate the mean, median, mode, and range.
  • Place Value: Using a bullseye visual or other type of visual (like this one), place different ‘sized’ bricks in each category, and the students can use that information to write out the number indicated. This could make for fun group work in class.
9 years ago343 notes