Brandon - The Legomeister.

Brandon has a fair collection of Lego over the years from birthdays and Christmas. We buy him some Lego sets too when they go on sale. Lego is one toy that I don't mind indulging my kids in. It enhances their creativity, constructive skills, mind development and exploration. Afterall, Lego is the only toy that's been around for more than six decades and still growing in popularity, how bad can it be?

My eldest boy has a knack for assemblying things. I might add that he is very quick at it too. Most of the time, he would finish putting together his Lego sets (depending on the size and age group) anytime between 10 minutes to an hour. The thing is, once he has put a set together, that's it. He'll play with it or put it on the shelf as decoration. He doesn't like taking them apart and rebuilding them again (which is the objective of Lego). I can see why though. He sees it as a destruction of his creation and that's why he doesn't like to take them apart.

As such, one day I overheard him asking his dad, that if he finishes one Lego set, can he get a new one after. Of course, we're thinking "Oh no!" At the rate he assembles his Legos, that would mean at least one a week. Hubby tried to explain to him that the point of Lego is to build it, but also to be able to take it apart and rebuild it again. However, he wouldn't relent at the thought and was incessant about it. He said he was too quick at it and need new challenges. "Well, do them slower", was his dad's feeble reply. I rolled my eyes. Imagine Brandon building his Lego sets in slow-motion. I mean, if someone is good at doing something, he/she would be super-efficient at it. How can you expect them to be otherwise?

So, I came up with this challenge for him. Everytime he builds a Lego set, he should take it apart and rebuild it again. I will time him on a particular set and he must beat his previous time everytime, up to the stage where he can build that set without looking at the instruction manual. Then I will get him a new set. Needless to say, he has achieved this on some sets which are not so complicated.

On his birthday this year, I bought him a space shuttle Lego set. This set is actually for age 16+ and has more than 1200 pieces. It is a huge set and is actually quite complicated for him, but I got it because it was on sale supercheap. Also, I thought it was an apt buy considering that the space shuttle Discovery has recently made its last voyage before being decommissioned. So there's some historical essence to it for his later years. This set took him eight hours over two days, with the assistance of che-che and myself, to complete. It has two instruction manuals with a total of 152 pages. Let's see him beat this challenge....mwahaha !! *Evil laugh*.


Day One:

Day Two: