Mixing Legos

As a mother I am constantly fighting against the pull that T.V. and video games have on my boys.  Fortunately I learned when Henry was just a toddler, that the weekly limit for healthy kids should be 10 hours of TV viewing.  That knowledge helps me keep them down to 1 1/2 hours a day; but sometimes when I turn off the TV, the boys show strong emotions of anger or despair.  "There's nothing to do!"  I hear them say.

 Oh, am I just imagining that the house is full of toys, board games, books and art supplies?  Not to mention their bikes and scooters outside.  I had recently been threatening to start giving all these things away if the boys did not start playing with them.
 One day I pulled out our Lego Ideas Book to help get the creative juices flowing, but the boys found it intimidating.

   I realized I was going to have to sit down and build something myself, to prove to the boys that they didn't need a booklet of instructions to have fun with Legos. I didn't have enough gray blocks to build my church like the picture, so that was my first lesson to the boys - you don't have to use the same colors.  Then I didn't have the same smooth pieces as the book for the roof tiles, second lesson - get creative with what you do have.  My Stain Glass Cathedral ended up looking like a Japanese Temple.  I had fun and the boys stayed interested the whole time.
Near the finish, George made a tree for the church grounds and I realized he had used both traditional Legos and Duplo Legos.  What?!  I didn't know they could be used together!  Next time I will use the Duplo to build my foundation, and that will go much quicker.

I do recommend The Lego Ideas Book and have included the link up above.
There are fun projects to be found,  like this one.