Brick by Brick: LEGO Shipbuilding Education Program

One of our summer volunteers, Breena, helps a child build ships at H.C. Downing Library, June 2015.

For HRNM's education department, the summer months are usually pretty quiet. Visitation increases exponentially and we offer a number of additional activities in the museum, but aside from that, since school is out we don't often do many educational outreach programs during that time. This summer is different, though--we're offering our Lego Shipbuilding program at several branches of the Norfolk Public Library system. The program is open to "school-aged" children and teens, so we have a wide variety of age groups in attendance. Due to this huge gap in ages of the attendees, we've created a less math-intensive version of our middle school-focused Lego education program for the summer. Instead of asking about surface area, fractions, and percentages (concepts that most of our summer program attendees haven't yet learned), the students learn the basics of how ships were built in the 1700s versus how ships are build today--then they get to build the Lego versions of those ships for themselves.

We've done two of these programs already and have three more scheduled this summer. Our next program is this Wednesday at Park Place Library, so we hope to see you there. We'll also be at H.C. Downing Library on July 20 and July 23. Call the libraries to register for this fun, FREE educational event today!

Tara, another summer volunteer, works with a student to build a ship at H.C. Downing Library, June 2015.