Will Gardner clicked Lego bricks into place to build a jail cell, an escape pod and a mini-ship carrying “a bunch of guys” during Lego club at the Norwich Public Library one Tuesday afternoon in late September.
Gardner, a first-grader at Marion Cross School, was one of half a dozen children pulling bricks of various colors, wheels and small figures from assorted bins in the library’s basement that day.
“There’s only one way to get out,” Gardner, 6, said of his Lego prison cell, which held snakes.
The program, which meets weekly in six-week intervals, is popular and staff are relatively hands-off. Kate Minshall, who was working at the desk in the children’s room nearby as Gardner and others played, sorts the blocks into bins by color, but otherwise the program is pretty self-sufficient, she said.
“They do all the negotiating,” said Minshall, a library assistant. “I rarely facilitate anything.”
Several libraries across the region now host Lego clubs, which give children a chance to build with a set of Legos not their own, spend time with their peers and flex their creativity and problem-solving skills. More advanced Legos, such as those used by teams competing in the For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology (FIRST) Lego League, expose children to robotics, computer programming and engineering. Libraries, formerly known simply as homes for books, now offer educational programs that extend beyond literacy.
The Norwich library offers Lego club participants a chance to play without guidance from adults because the children “didn’t want it structured,” Minshall said.
Some other programs, including those at the Quechee Library and Wilder Club and Library, offer a series of challenges for participants to accomplish. While free building is always an option, those who complete the eight challenges in 10 weeks win a prize, said Marieke Sperry, a librarian in Quechee and Wilder.
Challenges include building a car, using balloons to propel it; building a boat that doesn’t sink and building a tic-tac-toe board, Sperry said. Often, a challenge will require that the children work together.
In Quechee, the number of children participating on a given day ranges from nine to 20, while in Wilder the regular group consists of about five children, Sperry said. Participants are primarily elementary school aged, she said.
Coming to the library to play with Legos gives kids a chance to use pieces they may not have at home.
“Somebody else’s toys are always more fun,” she said.
Sperry tries to engage the children in the process, beyond simply accomplishing the challenges, she said. When they finish a project, Sperry pushes them to see if there are ways they might improve their creations.
“You have to work pretty hard to try and get kids not to rush through something,” she said.
The Howe Library in Hanover offers a Lego program during the winter. There, children are invited to build on a theme if they want to or to free build, said Denise Reitsma, head of youth services at the Howe.
“It’s a mix,” she said.
Children use eye-hand coordination to build with Legos and the process is often social, said Reitsma. In addition, sometimes they use the Legos for dramatic play, she said.
For libraries, Lego clubs are relatively easy to manage because they simply need to provide the bricks — which are mostly donated — and the space, Reitsma said.
The Royalton Memorial Library, in collaboration with the Royalton Recreation Commission, started a Lego club a couple of years ago, said library trustee Theresa Manning.
The group meets monthly and has a theme each month, Manning said. Such themes have included bridges, a maze, castles and assorted entries for the Tunbridge Fair.
The maze was the most fun, said Manning, whose grandchildren, aged 10 and 8, live with her and participate in the club. The group built the maze and then set some “little electronic bugs” loose in it, she said. The bugs are more formally known as Hexbug Nano.
“Everybody really enjoyed that,” Manning said.
She meets with Kerri Rogers, of the recreation commission, in the summer and together they lay out the schedule for the year, she said.
“Our library is focused on giving children something to do other than just be out on the streets,” Manning said. “What they really love is being able to build something with their hands.”
Participants gave their monetary winnings from the Tunbridge World’s Fair to the club in order to purchase bases for their creations, Manning said.
Robotic forms of Legos are also popular around the Valley and they expose kids to robotics, computer programming and engineering.
At the Richards Free Library in Newport, Children’s Librarian Moriah Churchill runs an after school maker-play program, which sometimes incorporates Legos. One activity combines cubelets — robot blocks, which don’t require programming — and Legos. The children attach Lego structures to the cubelets and drive them around, she said.
While the program exposes participants to math and engineering concepts, Churchill isn’t heavy-handed with the lessons.
“We’re playing,” she said. “Sometimes we’re learning, but mostly we’re playing.”
Some children in the Valley are taking Legos to another level with the FIRST Lego League, which requires participants to work together to program a robot. Upper Valley teams include those in Canaan, Claremont, Hanover, Lebanon, Lyme, Meriden, White River Junction and Windsor, according to the league’s website. Three teams, coached by parent and Hypertherm engineer Wayne Chin, are based at Crossroads Academy in Lyme.
This year, some of the league’s robot missions ask teams to move a shark to a new home, work with another team to bring animals of the same species together and convert a panda’s home from a captive setting to a natural one.
Chin’s teams meet twice a week for two hours at a time. He’s added a third day — one hour on Tuesdays — for further preparation, he said.
The teams, which include 8- to 14-year-olds, ready their robots, which are built using Lego Mindstorms — a programmable brick with motors, remote controls, sensors and other attachments — and also conduct research to solve a real-world problem. This year, teams must identify a problem that occurs when people and animals interact. Then, they are asked to design a solution to the problem.
They will compete against other teams at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering on Nov. 12 in a qualifier event for the state tournament.
While children sometimes join the Lego League because they enjoy building with Legos, the league is more about computer programming and research than it is about building structures, Chin said.
“One of the challenges of this program in all schools (is) reaching out to kids who shun the word Lego,” he said.
Building enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering and math is part of the purpose of the league, said Amy Keeler, a current judge and former organizer for the competition at Thayer.
“It’s so hard for so many schools to get kids excited,” Keeler said.
Through competition and collaboration, the league’s founder, Dean Kamen, a Bedford, N.H. entrepreneur and inventor, aimed to inspire passion for STEM fields to a degree more commonly found elsewhere, Keeler said.
“He wanted kids to get as excited about robotics as they do about sports,” she said.
Given that since the league’s founding in 1989, it has grown to include teams based around the world, it appears to be generating the enthusiasm Kamen envisaged, she said.
The Baxter Memorial Library in Sharon holds Lego Club meetings on Thursdays from 2:30 to 4 p.m. More information at 802-763-2875 or baxterlibrarysharonvt@yahoo.com.
The Canaan Town Library holds a Lego club for children ages 5 and older on the last Saturday of every month from 10 a.m. to noon More information at 603-523-9650 or circulationdesk@canaanlibrary.org.
The Howe Library hosts a Lego club in the winter. Information about children’s programs at the Howe is available at thehowe.org/events.
Lego Tuesdays at the Norwich Public Library take place from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. The club is open to all children, but those under 8 should come with an adult. More information at 802-649-1184.
The Royalton Memorial Library Lego Club takes place on the third Saturday of every month from 1 to 2 p.m. More information at 802-763-7094 or librarian@royaltonlibrary.org.
Lego Club takes place at the Wilder Club on Thursdays and the Quechee Library on Fridays at 3 p.m. in both locations. The programs are open to children age 5 and up. More information at quecheelibrary.org.
More information about FIRST Lego League, including a listing of Upper Valley teams, can be found online at firstinspires.org.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
