My son can do puzzles like I have never seen. Puts them together faster than I can and he does not look at the box to see the final picture. So I figured simple LEGOS would be good.
I am buying him the small $5 3n1 Creator sets. There are 3 different options to build but can only be 1 at a time. He does alright. I have him find the piece and show him where it goes. He makes it about 3/4 of the way thru and looses interest until I finish it and then loves playing with it.
He asked my wife to do one with him the other night. She has never done a LEGO set ever.

Oh, my dear goodness!!!! It was so painful. She did not care if she was using light grey when it was supposed to be dark grey. The wheels were clearly facing the wrong way.

Then today my boy asked if we could build the train and he brings me the Tupperware tub and I was mortified!!!!!!
She just dumped all of the disassembled kits into the same tub.

You never ever ever ever mix disassembled kits.

She has lost LEGO duty.

What is cool now that I did not have as a kid is you can download the instructions. So whenever I buy a kit I download the PDF and have a folder on the computer so we'll always have it.

Legos are Scandinavian caltrops

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
You never ever ever ever mix disassembled kits.

... The hell you say?

Build the kit once as intended. Then play with it. Then disassemble it and put the pieces in the tub.

Whenever you want to build something custom, go for the tub-o-parts.

This is the One True Lego Path.

What kind of repressive, OCD, fun-killing Lego prison camp are you running, sir?

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Legos are Scandinavian caltrops

Truth. A painful truth.

What you need is some kind of lego app that utilizes your phone's camera & figures out which pieces go to which set by looking at a pile of legos.

Rogue has nailed it.

I grew up with one kit. A small box with lots of imagination. I built all kinds of things with names no one ever heard of.

DaVinci got nuthin on me

My legos are in a tub or two all mixed up. Find instructions and dig for the pieces. I can't imagine keeping the pieces for every set in their own containers. What a limit on the imagination of a child.

No matter how many and various pieces the boys got, they always resulted in some kind of weapon. No matter how long and completely they cleaned up after, there was always at least one left in the carpet for my bare feet to find after tucking them in at night.

I'm on both sides of the camp re '1 box of all sets'
Great for a la carte building, but when my daughter wants to re-build a set, it takes well over an hour to find the parts in the mish mash of sets.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
You never ever ever ever mix disassembled kits.

... The hell you say?

Build the kit once as intended. Then play with it. Then disassemble it and put the pieces in the tub.

Whenever you want to build something custom, go for the tub-o-parts.

This is the One True Lego Path.

What kind of repressive, OCD, fun-killing Lego prison camp are you running, sir?

Exactly! We NEVER had plans. It was what we THOUGHT we could build or imagine!

I built all 7 Battlestars... from scratch, no prefab Lego kit.

Routinely built an 8' skyscraper... from scratch, no prefab Lego kit.

Great thing about legos is if you need to escape quickly and your attacker is barefoot, just dump them all over the floor!

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
You never ever ever ever mix disassembled kits.

... The hell you say?

Build the kit once as intended. Then play with it. Then disassemble it and put the pieces in the tub.

Whenever you want to build something custom, go for the tub-o-parts.

This is the One True Lego Path.

What kind of repressive, OCD, fun-killing Lego prison camp are you running, sir?

My childhood precisely. Though I think I got only a very few of this specialized kits, I spent my youth fighting with the basic shapes and sizes....

The primary point of most kits is to add to the big bucket for making your own creations.

It's in the waiver.

When my younglings were very young I would play legos with them. when they were not watching I'd steal a few legos here and few there until there were just a couple of blocks left. Then it would dawn on them that pops was up to his old tricks and they'd attack.

Aside from one Expert builder set, ( a helicopter ) I had a big, metal can, ( it used to store hats, or maybe cookies.. ) that all of the LEGOs went into between build projects.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
You never ever ever ever mix disassembled kits.

... The hell you say?

Build the kit once as intended. Then play with it. Then disassemble it and put the pieces in the tub.

Whenever you want to build something custom, go for the tub-o-parts.

This is the One True Lego Path.

What kind of repressive, OCD, fun-killing Lego prison camp are you running, sir?

RELEASE THE KRAGLE!!!!

My wife sorted all Lego by color so it's like Lego store with bins of each color. We easily have thousands of dollars of legos.

You can get the directions for any set online and build any set you wish.

The are also Lego rentals, comes in the mail assemble play with it ship it back get a new. Service is to expensive for us but a cool idea.

There are TWO types of LEGO play:

SET BUILDING - purchase the set and build it. It is only to be disassembled for ease of storage purposes and to be built again as instructed. Those disassembled parts are never to be mixed with the disassembled parts from another set. The assembled sets can be played with together of course.

FREE BUILDING - this is where you just have a whole slew of random parts that you picked up for cheap at garage sales. eBay will likely be a place I look as well looks like they go for about $12 a pound. Though I am pretty sure my mother still has my tub of random LEGOS. These parts are to never be mixed with the parts from a set. A fully assembled free build can of course be put into play with fully assembled sets.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
It is only to be disassembled for ease of storage purposes and to be built again as instructed. Those disassembled parts are never to be mixed with the disassembled parts from another set.

I am shocked and appalled. Your statements are an affront to all civilized men. You, sir, are a miscreant and a ne'er-do-well. I challenge you to a duel. Sabres at dawn.