HELENA — Legos are being brought into Helena Public Schools classrooms for a mix of play and valuable lessons in STEAM.
"Catching their attention, the focus, holding all the pieces together in a classroom is hard, but Lego is making it easy," said Emily Linder, a Helena Middle School teacher.
Educators have multiple training days this week on incorporating Legos in their schools.
(Hear from educators about the benefits of teaching with Legos)
The Helena Education Foundation (HEF) purchased six palettes of Lego kits and brought in a certified Lego Education Academy Teacher Trainer with money from a grant awarded by Boeing.
The incoming executive director of HEF, Becca Leaphart, said, "The idea was to bring in hands-on, inquiry-based learning to the elementary schools."
Each kit comes with lesson plans for five different curriculum areas.
These include 'Construction and Deconstruction, 'Simple Machines,' 'Motors and Aviation,' 'Engineering and Design,' and 'Coding and Robotics.'
"The students are going to learn how to build different things and then learn how to use a computer to program it to move using sensors, motors, and all kinds of fun things to make it have action," said Paul Keeney, the Lego Teacher Trainer.
Legos can give kids hands-on experience with STEAM, which stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics.
Beyond that, the building bricks can also have a role in what Lego's official website calls "pretend play" - igniting a child's imagination and creativity.
"Kids think of Legos as fun," said Keeney. "They play, and they don't think of it as learning or hard or a chore. When it's in the classroom, it's just natural that 'This is going to be fun time.'"
Linder said, "It's all kinds of things that we hope to instill in kids, and it's a way that they can do it not even realizing they're learning."
These Lego kits will only be used in kindergarten through eighth grade, and the middle schools will keep their own set of kits while the elementary schools will be rotating them.
