It first started out when my oldest daughter, Lily got a LEGO set for her birthday. It was from the Friends series. When we opened up the box Lily and her sister, Jordan just wanted to create the people. My job was to put the set together. I didn’t mind doing that at all. At that point I didn’t know if they would want to keep playing with that set. It turns out that one set started up my daughters love for LEGO playsets.
We would get some small sets here and there. I wanted to have them help me build the sets. One reason was that they could have a sense of accomplishment once they finished creating that building, car, or ship. Two they would learn how to follow directions other than from me, my wife, or a teacher. There are many benefits of kids playing with the LEGO sets that you as parents already know. It is also a great way of “unplugging” and just being able to chat with your 
kids. I am so glad my daughters love playing and building with LEGO.
What I like even more is how my love for Star Wars is now shared with my daughters. I think I have to thank LEGO for a little of that. My daughters and I love picking out Star Wars LEGO sets to build. We make up stories with each set. We had built a few of the vehicles from the Star Wars LEGO line. Once completed we fly them around and make laser sounds as we try and shoot each other’s ship down.
Last week we got the T-16 Skyhopper set. The Skyhopper was known to be used in the canyons of Tatooine. You know the ships that would target womp rats that Luke Skywalker famously talked about in Episode IV. This set comes with a Skyhopper pilot. The ship has adjustable wings, detachable storage box and dual spring-loaded shooters. It also comes with a womp rat for you to practice your shooting skills. It even has a Tusken Raider. This time you won’t need Ben Kenobi to help you fight off the raiders since you have your T-16. This set was great since I had the girls do most of the work. It was just the right size for them to build with not that much help from me.
That is where the many levels of LEGO comes into play. There are different sets ranging from a small sets to gigantic collections that need a whole family to work on together. Speaking of large playsets, recently my good friend Ryan Hamilton won a Star Wars Ewok Village Playset. He knows how much of Star Wars fan that I am and that my girls love the film series too that he graciously offered me the set. That is a friend right there folks. Thanks again Ryan. You are a great friend sir!
This past weekend my daughters and I tackled the Ewok Village. We spent Thursday night, Friday night, and pretty much all of Saturday working on the village. The just under 2000 piece set was finished Saturday night. My daughters asked me to finish the set so they could play with it the next day. On Saturday my girls and I were talking and singing like Ewoks as we were working on the set. They asked about the Ewoks and which movie they were in. We also talked about things other than Star Wars. The time we shared without a TV, iPad, or computer allowed me to chat with them about things like what happened in school last week. We talked about a slew of things that I feel might not have come up if we didn’t have that time together. It was a great experience.
The Ewok Village set from LEGO comes with all the great characters we love from “Return of the Jedi.” In that that set you will get R2-D2, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, C-3PO, 2 Rebel soldiers, 5 Ewoks, 2 Scout Troopers, and 2 Stormtroopers. The set comes with about 11 bags that you work on from three instruction books. As I stated earlier my daughters love to create the people from the sets. Lily desperately wanted to build Princess Leia. That was in bag nine. I told her she needed to wait.
Just like the famous “Are we there yet?” line that kids ask on road trips, Lily asked me if we could build the Leia figure from time to time. My response to her each time was no. She needed to wait until bag nine. I thought telling her that a Jedi has to be patient would work, but parenting mind tricks don’t work on her.
Finally we got to bag nine and she was able to build Leia. She was almost on her way to go away and leave me alone to build the rest of the village. I asked her if she wouldn’t mind helping me until dinner. She smiled and sat back down. Our talks of everything and anything continued. I did tell them that I would finish the last two LEGO bags by myself at night. The next morning they played with the village and Skyhopper together along with some other characters and vehicles. I think that they appreciated the village and T-16 even more since they had a hand in building them.
If you are looking for a great way to talk and bond with your kids without any distractions I find that LEGO is sure fire method. It is just you and your kids at a table building sets and memories together.