Hi everyone, it’s Whatever Wednesdays again and this is going to be another Kylie’s Korner post. This will be kind of short and mostly just be pictures. Today we’re going to talk about Kylie’s Legos.

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Ok, let’s jump in:

So before you read this post, you should probably read the previous post: Let’s Talk About Legos.

For the short recap, my daughter recently got two Lego sets:

One of which I mentioned already, which is:

LEGO Disney Princess 41067 Belle’s Enchanted Castle Building Kit (374 Piece)

and one I haven’t mentioned yet:

Disney Moana – Moana’s Island Adventure 41149

Since the Moana Lego Set was slightly easier with a 5-12 age rating, we started with that one first.

Moana’s Island Adventure

Kylie was really excited to build these Lego sets. Usually after coming home from pre-school she wants to watch a little TV, like an episode of PJ Masks or Shimmer and Shine. We try to limit her TV watching to only 30 minutes to an hour a day, if possible. This is sometimes a little longer on weekends. However, she opted to go downstairs to my office and build her Lego sets with me instead of watch TV for the past week or so because she was so excited:

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So we set to work building this set first. It’s actually a really cute little set since it has a lot of little elements from the movie which add a nice touch to it. For example, there is a little cubby hole where the “Heart of Te Fiti” goes and both a Moana mini-doll and her pig Pua are included.

So first things first, I wanted to make sure she developed good habits when it came to building Legos, meaning trying to follow the instructions and not skipping steps. So we poured out bag 1 in the middle and then the smaller bag of smaller parts into separate piles. We called them the “big pieces” and “small pieces” piles.

Let’s look at some pictures

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Then for each section I would have her find each of the pieces and tell me how many of each piece was needed. She would put aside the pieces that were needed for that particular step first before trying to put them together. In this picture you see she has put aside 3 of the biege “thin slopes”, which is what we have decided to call them.

Overall, she did great with this set. It wasn’t too difficult to put together, she only needed daddy’s help for some of the smaller pieces:

Here’s the finished build

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Belle’s Enchanted Castle

Now for the one she was really excited about, Belle’s Enchanted Castle:

Since the age range for this one was 6-12, I was a little concerned that it might be too difficult for her. However, sometimes you need to just dive in and see how they do. I constantly tried to remind her that it’s ok if she can’t get it, it’s more important to try first. However, she’s only 4 and she got a little frustrated at times with the small pieces.

Also, the directions were sometimes difficult for her to follow since you would placing 4-6 pieces at a time. When she gets frustrated she’ll fall back to a “trail and error” approach where she’ll just put the piece down anywhere and then see if that’s right. I offered her a new method of trying to figure out where the pieces go. Establish a landmark that you can see on the directions and your own set and then “count dots”. If you count 2 dots, then your piece should fit into the 3rd dot. It took a little bit, but I think she understands the concept.  Overall, I could see a definite improvement in her 3D understanding by the end of the build.

Let’s look at some pictures

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Oh by the way, that purple thing underneath the Legos is a plastic bin cover. She was having some difficulty snapping the pieces together on the soft carpet surface. I think providing a more sturdy, rigid surface to build on helped.

I do have a critique for the creators of this Lego set. While I realize that this set is made for 6-12 year olds and not 4 year olds, while building the set it felt rather “flimsy”. What I mean by that is that you would build parts separately that weren’t “held together” by Legos. I understand the stylistically it might have been made that way for the kids to be able to follow the directions easier. However, during the middle of the build, the castle felt very unstable. A few times Kylie (and me) popped a few Legos off from the foundation.

However, that’s just a minor gripe. Overall, the design of the castle was very nice or as my daughter says “It’s so beautiful!” They also did a really great job at re-imagining all the side characters, like Lumiere, Cogs worth, Mrs. Potts, Chip, Babette, Wardrobe and Stove. A nice trick from the creators was making the prince have both a “Beast mask” and a “Prince wig” which just sits on top of the mini-dolls head. This helps the children to re-enact the story of Beauty and the Beast, or to do their own “Ever After” story where the Beast reverts back to the Prince.

Here’s the finished build

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So what’s the verdict?

They came out pretty well I think:

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I think my daughter is a Lego lover now. She already is talking about what Lego set(s) she wants to build next. I may have created a Lego monster!

However, just look at this smile and sense of pride:

Fulfilled.

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Ok, so what’s next?

Well, there are still a lot of Legos on my wishlist. You can find the full list on my prior post.

However, the next two on that list that are on my radar are:

LEGO Technic Getaway Racer 42046 Building Kit

LEGO Technic Police Interceptor 42047 Building Kit

I think there is good value there and teaching her about the pullback mechanism is an added bonus. However, it’s ages 7-12, so she may need some more help with this one.

Also, there is this new set that she is really excited about:

LEGO Friends Heartlake Hospital 41318 Building Kit (871 Piece)

It looks like it’s currently out of stock on Amazon at the MSRP of $99.99. Now, $99.99 is no small chunk of change. However, this set has 871 pieces so it’s pretty monstrous. In addition to that, it’s under the Lego Friends name, so there are no licensing fees like with Lego Disney and Lego Star Wars sets, so there is good value there I think. For example, it has a helicopter, an ambulance, and 3 mini-dolls. It even has an x-ray suite, which I am super happy about since I’m a radiologist. It’s for ages 6-12, which is a step up from the 6-12 set though, so we’ll see. I’ll leave it on my wishlist and have her look at it again.

BONUS

Kylie and I had udon from Marukame Udon the other day:

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"Yummy Udon!" ? #udon #noodles #yummy #lunchtime #tempura #onionbombs #lunchwithdaddy #alwaysposing #alwayssmiling #kidsofig #kidstagram #instakids #instagood #instamodel #instabeauty #pretty #bkotw #beautifulkids #vietnamese #italian #vietaliana #hapa #hapagirl #hapakids #hapalife #model #kidsmodel #boba #marukame #hawaii

A post shared by Kylie (@vietaliana) on Jul 17, 2017 at 7:57pm PDT

TL;DR

Kylie + Daddy + Legos = Happiness.

-Sensei

Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.

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