Fun Friday: Lego Day

Today was Lego Day. We had Andrew and Ava over once more and this Friday I was able to invite one of my former students (whose mother and I hit it off). Sam has three brothers and of all the things we have planned this summer, nothing else but Lego Day would work for a group ranging in age from two to somewhere around twelve (at least that's how old I think Sam's oldest brother is).

For the first hour and a half, it was our usual crowd... Sydney, Andrew, Ava, Jack and me. I worked very hard on building houses since all four kids preferred adding to existing structures over building their own. Then, around ten thirty, Sam and his brothers arrived.

I was thrilled to have them. Not only were they old enough to make some really cool designs, but at the end they not only cleaned up, but cleaned up sorting the bricks into the very same sets I had organized them into in the first place. Wow.

I also liked how well the older two, Shelby and Nicholas, did with all of the younger kids. You can tell these are older brothers. They reminded me a lot of Sydney's Uncle Dave, who has six younger brothers. He has always been patient with little kids and Shelby and Nicholas were the same way. Nicholas had a very complicated design which he did fuss at his brothers for messing with, but when Jack came along, he never said a word, just kept an eye on little hands and rebuilt anything they undid.

I wondered if it would be weird for Sam to be at his teacher's house, but he took it all very much in stride. His mother is so gregarious that I imagine he gets to see a lot of people outside of their "normal" environment. I know she is good friends with his (and our) pediatrician, for example, and I bet he sees her outside of the doctor's office. Mostly, it was nice to see Sam, who has always been the sort of fellow who likes to get into a project and really work on the details, outside of the classroom where he really could take his time and no one was rushing him to finish in time for the math lesson or some other nonsense.

Sam's younger brother, Charles, joined us for a little lunch. Ava was too busy playing to eat and Charles had a little more in common with my usual group than his older brothers. We actually went around the table talking about how old we all were and realized we had a five year old, a four year old, a three year old, and a two year old here.

Sydney enjoyed Lego Day, although I think it was a bigger hit with the older boys. Sydney and her friends all preferred Water Day, at least so far. It tells me I am going to have to be really well prepared for next Friday's Town Day in order to hold their interest. All four year olds look (and act) a little ADD to me. It's almost as if their attention spans are only four minutes long at best....

But fun was had by all. They just didn't want to continue the Lego play all day long like I did. I mean like I thought they would. But truth be told, an hour and half (or actually two hours for Sydney and Andrew who started before Ava arrived) is a really long time for kids who aren't in Kindergarten, yet.