What we can learn form The Lego Movie

My kids love Legos.  Every year at birthdays and Christmastime I can guarantee that a new Lego set will be at the top of their list.  The sets that they like are getting more and more intricate as the years go on.  Typically they come with one or more instruction books with piece-by-piece instructions of how to build the Dolphin Cruiser or the Lion Chi Temple.  When my kids open them up, they diligently follow the directions and eventually come out with a product that looks exactly like the one on the box.  They get a great sense of accomplishment, but they definitely didn’t tap into their imagination in the way that I think a toy like Legos were originally designed to do.  When they seem to enjoy their Legos the most, however, is when they just sit down with their giant bins of bricks and begin to build the things that they have dreamed up on their own. 

Herein lies the premise of The Lego Movie which I took the kids to this past weekend.  It was a great movie on a number of levels, even the surprisingly catchy song that played over and over and over-“Everything is Awesome.”  The premise of the movie is that the evil President Business wants to use the Kragle—the most powerful weapon ever created, to freeze every Lego in the world into the scene that came with the directions.  President Business has cultivated a society in which rules are paramount and the day to day life of everyone in Bricksburg is extremely regimented.  Enter our everyday hero Emmet who through dumb luck finds the “Piece of Resistance”—the only object in the world that can stop the Kragle.  This leads to an adventure straight out of the imaginative mind of an elementary school student.  One if which Batman can show up to save the day in an Old West Scene or where Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon can show up on demand when needed.   It was an absolutely wonderful show.

I think there is so much we can take away from a movie like this one as educators.  The parallels between the battles between the conformity of the SOLs and the power of the 4C’s are eerily similar.  Kids are intuitively creative and want to use their imaginations to build, to experiment, to fail, and to learn.  I was thinking throughout the movie of the work we are focusing on this year, and it just reaffirmed for me again that we are doing the right thing for our kids.  By allowing them opportunities to be creative, to think through problems and to work together, we are building the skills they need to se successful in life and to defeat President Business and the evil Kragle.