Grow Math Skills With These LEGO Activities

It’s hard to find a kid (or even an adult!) who doesn’t love tinkering with LEGOs. However, the same can’t be said for math. Many adults admit to struggling with math from a very early age, and many children today do, too. 

Luckily, you can engage your kids and make math fun by using LEGOs for their math homework!

How Do LEGOs Help with Math Concepts?

LEGOs are an excellent tool for helping children understand math concepts because they have a hard time visualizing math in their heads. Children (especially young children) need to see how adding one and one makes two. Concrete, visible examples are essential at these early ages.

But instead of gathering ten teddy bears, trains, or baby dolls, LEGOs are the perfect, transportable size. They snap together easily to show how two (or more) numbers combine to make a new number and break it apart for subtraction, division, and fraction practice. 

Both standard and Duplo LEGO blocks can be used for math. Keep in mind the age of your child (regular LEGOs are a choking hazard for children three and under) and their abilities. Small hands are less frustrated with large blocks. You can also tape numbers or use a dry-erase marker on large blocks to practice more advanced math skills like skip counting. Standard LEGOs allow you to do large numbers with less space. 

Here are some creative ways to use LEGOs to enhance your child’s learning, no matter their age. 

1. Basic Addition and Subtraction with Blocks

These straightforward exercises are easy and fun to complete. Use the blocks to represent the numbers in the equation to show your child how numbers work together. This reinforces counting skills and helps them visualize how numbers work together. 

2. Introduce Place Value 

Adding and subtracting within the first nine numbers is fairly easy, but once you begin adding and subtracting with tens, hundreds, thousands, and more, things can quickly get tricky. It’s a lot for your child to visualize in their mind. This is why manipulatives (like LEGOs) help them keep track of numbers in their head.

Create a simple place value chart or paper (units, tens, hundreds, etc) like this one. Make multiple stacks of ten blocks for the tens column and have individual blocks for the units column. 

Write out some numbers or equations for your child to practice. For instance, ask them to use the blocks to make the number 13. They should place one stack of ten in the tens column and three blocks in the units column. Or to make the number 54, they should put 5 tens in the tens column and four blocks in the units column. 

3. Addition and Subtraction with Place Value

Once they master this, they can begin to add and subtract. For example, 13 + 54 would result in 7 unit blocks and 6 tens stacks. 

The LEGO magic happens when they create a new tens stack. In the equation 15 + 19, they will see that 5 and 9 make 14; there are too many unit blocks and they have enough to create a new tens stack to place in the tens column. 

The reverse can be done for subtraction. Start with basic subtraction that doesn’t require borrowing, like 44 – 22. Your child takes away two tens stacks and two unit blocks. 

But let’s say the equation is 44 – 26. Your child moves a stack from the tens column to the units column and then takes away 6 blocks from what is now 14. The LEGOs easily break apart so they can come to the right answer. 

4. Skip Counting with Numbered Blocks

Using Duplo blocks, tape or write with a dry-erase marker the numbers you want your child to practice skip counting. For instance, if you want your child to practice skip counting by 3’s, you would write 3, 6, 9, 12, etc, on individual blocks. Your child then stacks them up in the right order.

5. Pattern Recognition

Although pattern recognition is generally taught as a pre-K or kindergarten skill, pattern recognition is essential for math at all levels. 

Give your child a pattern to replicate using different colored blocks. For a young child, these can be simple (like red, blue, red, blue, or red, blue, green, red, blue, green). But for older children, you can give them a greater challenge! You can choose a longer string of colors or an inverted color pattern (like red, yellow, blue, yellow, red).

After presenting them with your pattern, ask them to build their tower to replicate yours. LEGOs make it easy to do a side-by-side comparison and see if your child succeeded.  

6. Measuring and Comparing Lengths

Young children are often tested on knowing a greater or lesser number ( < and >). This can be confusing when phrased in these terms, but are much easier understood when the child builds a LEGO tower. It’s easy to see that a tower 9 blocks high is greater than a tower 7 blocks high. LEGOs bring internal visualization to life for more concrete learning.

Math Activities at Crestwood Preschool Academy

Whether for work or play, Crestwood Preschool Academy loves building blocks! Crestwood Preschool Academy provides age-appropriate blocks for children of all ages. Our teachers love using blocks to explain and enhance their math lessons and find that children better grasp math concepts when using LEGOs as manipulatives.