Sponsored by LEGO
Give a child a box of LEGO DUPLO and they’ll never be bored. These incredible bricks and combination playsets have been around for over 80 years and are continuing to provide children with hours of fun and creative entertainment. It’s also great that LEGO caters for the toddler age group with the larger LEGO DUPLO bricks, which perfectly suit my little Possum (aged 2.5 years).
Fun ways to play with Lego Duplo
LEGO DUPLO is such a sharable play material and being open-ended it isn’t hard to leave kids to it, however, I thought it would be fun to show you some different ways to play with one single set of LEGO DUPLO.
This particular set I’m using is called ‘My First Shop’. Possum absolutely loved playing with it and it certainly inspired us to play in a variety of ways.
Building Stories
LEGO DUPLO playsets introduce children to a variety of imaginary and real-life scenarios. The ‘My First Shop’ can highlight the exchanges between a customer and shop owner and so we decided we would simply get involved in some pretend play. The conversation between these characters was hilarious!
This type of play experience is lots of great fun. If you haven’t done it before, playing shops encourages children to develop social skills by learning to share, take turns, practice patience and expand on their language vocabulary.
Adventures
For something a little different we decided to be a little creative and play a guessing game with some of the LEGO DUPLO pieces found in the ‘My First Shop’ playset.
Possum was almost shaking with excitement and simply couldn’t wait to don her tea towel eye mask and get her hands into the soapy water, which I prepared beforehand. Her task was simple: using only her sense of touch, find the DUPLO LEGO piece in the water and tell me or describe the pieces hidden.
Possum did incredibly well. Many of the LEGO DUPLO pieces in the playset were quite unique it made it an achievable challenge for her. It was so much fun and I couldn’t tell you how many times we played it. We increased the challenge by adding more pieces to the water.
Play & Discover
So much learning occurs during LEGO DUPLO play without children even knowing about it. Constructing, creating and sorting are just some of the benefits to children who are engaging with LEGO DUPLO.
It didn’t take me long to set up this quick and easy colour sorting game for Possum to play with and learn from. Using coloured squares I had Possum play and discover how to match the coloured bricks with the paper.
To extend this learning experience with Possum I asked her to count the number of coloured bricks, identify which group had the most or least number of bricks and to find the brick that was the smallest or largest.
So many ways to play
LEGO DUPLO is so wonderfully flexible that your child is only limited by their imagination. Possum also had a great time building, constructing and creating a new type of car for the characters to drive around in. The possibilities and opportunities for them to expand their creativity and learn through their play experiences are really quite endless.
GIVEAWAY TIME!!!
Thanks to the generosity of LEGO, you have the opportunity to win a box of ‘My First Shop’ DUPLO and valued at $39.99.
TO ENTER simply answer below – ‘How do your children like to play with LEGO?’
Terms and Conditions
– Winners will be contacted via email. If you have not left a valid email address for us to contact you on, another entrant will be drawn instead.
Gorgeous. We might try hiding some Duplo in soapy water today and giving that game a try. Thanks for sharing 🙂
These are such fun ideas!
My children love to play with Lego by making homes and worlds for their toys!
My littlies love taking lego people everywhere..they visit the beach (the sandpit), swim at the pool (the bath), adventure in the forest (garden…mud!) So much fun..they come everywhere with us
LEGO and mud would be so much fun!!! LOL
Thanks for your entry Kasey. 🙂
My child will LOVES to stack them up and knock them down!
My child loves to stack things up and knock them down too! 🙂
Oh I love the colour matching idea – so simple and fun!
My kids all use the Duplo and Lego to set up elaborate imaginative play scenes. They build little worlds and then act out stories with all the characters. We have a Duplo Nanny and Pop which are very popular! LOL
Thanks Kate! I love that they Nanny and Pop are popular. Very cute.
Taking activities the kids already enjoy (LEGO!) and extending them the way you’ve done here is such a wonderful idea, Kate. This is kind of ‘unschooled’ learning and i love it. x
Thanks Bron! Nothing like thinking out of the square a little. 😉
My Miss 3 loves taking the duplo girl & Nanna for rides on the duplo horses! She also likes to read them stories & sing songs to them, so cute
Awwwww that would be really adorable to listen to Michele! Very cute. 🙂
My children ADORE Lego. It is such an incredible, open-ended toy which really encourages creativity, problem-solving and imaginative play.
My children use their Lego to build elaborate play scenes. My son calls himself a Master-builder 🙂
Oh that’s so wonderful Kate! I love that he has given himself the title. 🙂
Thank you for your entry.
I love the different ways you guys play with LEGO DUPLO. My kids often bring their superheroes to the LEGO DUPLO scene and create fab stories.
Oh that’s so cool! It’s great when they combine various play figures. 🙂
These are such fantastic ideas Kate, my twins have only just found their box of Duplo again and have been setting up a castle ‘with toilet for weeing in’ It now houses all their treasures collected from outside and you better believe noone is allowed to touch it!
I really love the look of that little playset as all of my family daycare toddlers are very into shops and cars at the moment and of course love Duplo. Such a great product, thanks for sharing more pics of your gorgeous possum!!
Thank you so kindly Jodie! Of course every castle needs a toilet for weeing in. LOL
My kids love lego, they pour it out all over their bedroom floor and can play for hours. At the moment my son loves making boats, planes, armories and houses!
That sounds like great fun. Sometimes I have a cringe moment when Possum pours the LEGO onto the floor but the number of hours she spends playing with all the scattered pieces, it’s a joy. Thank you for your entry Kelly. 🙂
I am in the middle of cleaning all our Duplo so the hiding in soapy water game will be PERFECT – I had never thought to try that!!! Thanks 🙂 Besides imaginary play, my boys also love to build ships and rockets with our Duplo 🙂
It’s a great way to give LEGO a good clean too Chelsea! 😉
They build things of course. Just when you think they’ve made it all, your little girl builds a perfume bottle. Yep, a perfume bottle. So cool!
Hahahaha LEGO can certainly be whatever you want it to me. Thanks Penny. 🙂
I love that a toy that I adored as a child is now loved by my girls! It appeals so much to their creative and imaginative sides.
You are absolutely right Christie! Thank you so kindly for your comment. 🙂
We often make houses for the people to live in, as well as car “trains” (they have lots of carriages – the old style Duplo from when we were kids ;D) that drive around our house to see the sites – like Little People town, the car garage, etc.
We love lego at our place!
Such a great response. My hubby found some of his dads old style DUPLO just the other day and Possum played with it for ages. Thanks Emma for your entry! 🙂
Absolutely ADORE the idea of hiding the LEGO DUPLO! I will definitely be giving this one a try 🙂
My little man (2yrs) loves his duplo he has his dads old duplo at his grandparents house & new at home. He loves to fill his tip truck and drive the Lego from the duplo draw to the other side of room to tip it out and build. It has helped with his speech therapy too with all the words you can use colours, up, more, stop, go,click and all the different things you can make. Thanks for sharing more ideas.
What a gorgeous little boy you must have and I have no doubt your parents get lots of joy watching him play. Thanks for your entry Jess.
My kids love to build airplanes and run around the house flying them. We have so much fun! I loved the soap idea!
Thanks so much Carol! It’s a great way to clean the LEGO DUPLO too! LOL
I appreciate you taking the time to enter the competition. 🙂
This is a great article. My cousin really become happy to play with this techniques. Thanks for your great tips.
Thank you kindly! 🙂
My kids love all things lego and I love how open ended it is. We often stack by colour or see who can build the highest towers, my son loves he’s imaginative story making with people. I listen to his little squeaky voices as he pretend plays, with a huge smile, love his imagination!
I think lego is something that is never just a phase, it’s loved in so many ways and adaptable to all ages.
That’s adorable Nae. I love the idea of building the highest tower too! Thanks for entering. 🙂
I love how my children build stories with lego cakes for mums birthday, caves for their dragons and castles for their superheroes the list could go on. They create using their imaginations and the possibilities are endless we always have the lego box available here to visit with and create, build on as they please. We love our Lego
Oh I love your examples Katie! Thanks for entering. 🙂
There always seems to be an effort to build the tallest building possible!
Love that Kristen! Thanks for your entry. 🙂
We love Lego/Duplo at our house too! I really like the colour matching activity. What a terrific idea. I’m definitely going to do that one with my kids this week. Thanks so much for this!
Thanks Living Serenely! I appreciate you taking the time to comment. Feel free to pop back and let me know how you go with the matching activity. .
my kid spend hours playing and designing lego shopping center’s , supermarkets , zoo’s and theme parks
Love that Sandra! There is so much learning involved in LEGO and designing. Thank you for your entry.
My nieces love playing with my daughter’s lego I would love to give them their own to play with at home.
LEGO is very irresistible. LOL
Thank you for your entry Kim. 🙂
My little boy (3) loves to crash duplo cars through any structures we have built then likes to build towers as high as he can with the bricks from what ever creation we have built. Whether it be a swap or a building site or a town.
we love to build cities with our Legos. We build the fire station the library and even the park.