The real reason why we do Legos with the kids

These are the long days of winter, which means lots of time inside. Which means lots of Legos and K'Nex and paper airplanes and tiny, self-stapled books for letters and numbers. It's a lot of fun for us, too, which is why we sometimes find ourselves gluing together paper fish or coloring inside the lines even after the kids turn in for the night.

Guess I'm not the only one. Christopher Neimann has some excellent fun with Legos and NYC on his NY Times blog Abstract City. Some of my favorites:

Check out the whole post here. So very, very clever.

He also did a great series of coffee-stained napkins. (It's much better than it sounds.)

Project: Chalk Robots Seen From Space (or suitably high up)

Giant Park Robots Best Seen From Above

What you'll need:

1. Box of sidewalk chalk (with plenty of both blue and pink for, um, making boy and girl robots).
   
2. Lots of sidewalk/cement, the curvier the better.
3. Bored and/or gullible children.
   
4. Roofdeck.*

*Roofdeck is optional, but it's way cool to look down from way up.

Begin by getting the kids outside in the park; tell them you're going to do something really cool.  Bring fancy drinks like pink lemonade if need be.  Don't forget the camera.  You want to draw something large (and easy), so we suggest robots.  You don't have to be that old (or young) to draw big squares, triangles, circles, and whatnot.

What goes with Giant Robots?  A rocket, of course (which are, conveniently, also pretty easy to draw).

Think big.  That's the idea, after all.

When you're done (or at least until the pink lemonade has been exhausted), head up to the roofdeck for the payoff.

I love how it looks like the blue (boy) robot is tossing the pinkish (girl) robot in the air, and we didn't intend that.

Next up?  Robots playing tennis.  And swimming.  Probably.