Friday 6 October saw Blackheath High School’s first Lego Club begin. The bricks were tipped from boxes and we were ready to go! 20 students from a range of year groups worked individually or in pairs to create their Lego masterpieces. Those who needed inspiration randomly picked Lego idea cards with suggestions covering a range of ideas such as a robot, a car, a Lego pizza, a bridge, building something one-handed or in one colour.

There was music, lots of laughing, collaboration and a great atmosphere in the room. Teachers popped in and wished they could join in! We started with a huge pile of Lego and finished with beautiful models and really happy students.

In both intended and unintended ways, Lego lets students exercise creativity and learn some fundamentals of engineering - almost in spite of themselves. The girls can build whatever is in their imagination and, at the same time, develop spatial reasoning and learn about structural integrity, design, and a practical sense of geometry. Lego is a good introduction to communicating ideas with physical objects. Putting things together and taking them apart gets students interested in how things work and helps them to think about a future in engineering.

Therapy and creativity, underpinned by engineering – what better club to join?