The Danish Lego Group partnered up with National Design Centre, DesignSingapore, Participate in Design, as well as the Infocomm Media Development Authority, to host the first ever “Build The Change” event from 21-28 November at the National Design Centre.
With an emphasis on learning through play, the themes for the Build The Change Event is “Build your future school, neighbourhood, or city” which sparked and inspired participants children into building lush green forests filled with animals, or green cities powered by bicycles.
“LEGO strongly believes in the power of ‘Play’ in helping a child grow and develop.” Lucia Cioffi, senior vice president of global procurement in The Lego Group explained.
“At the Lego Group, we believe that ‘Play’ is a vital tool in children’s development and indeed, when children play, they’re being inspired, they create innovations. They look at their own visions of the world, they express themselves, they solve problems,” Cioffi said.
LEGO Play Well report has found that 83% of children feel that they learn better when it feels like they are playing, and 93% of parents think that play should be used as a tool for a child’s learning and development in school.
Skills such as cognitive, creative, and social skills are all ones that Cioffi feels can be developed through ‘Play’, especially when they are building with LEGO.
“There are studies and there are reports that are actually showing that the most relevant skills needed for the 21st century are three – cognitive skills, creative skills, and social skills. When they build, kids are actually developing those skills. The cognitive area – mathematical dimensions [of the LEGO bricks] and problem-solving. The creative area – creating their builds and also finding solutions along the way in order to realize their vision, and the social area – think about your kids and give them a task together to build the tallest tower. What will happen is that the kids will start immediately interacting with each other in order to accomplish the task.”
