Earlier this year, LEGO and a group of impressive global partners successfully lobbied the UN to recognize the importance of play in childhood development by recognizing June 11th as the International Day of Play.

The concept of “Play” loosely means engaging in activities that use creative and imaginative skills, focusing on fun and process and less on an end result. As Niels B. Christiansen, CEO of the LEGO Group said, “For more than 90 years, we have championed children’s right to play, as we know that it can change lives. It strengthens family bonds and helps children develop essential skills and reach their full potential.”

Whether you and the children in your life engage in play regularly or need some inspiration, LEGO can be a great starting point because it can meet the children in your life where they are in their development, as well as be completely open-ended.

As a parent of three young children, I see the importance of play on a daily basis (and I have written about how to play with kids with LEGO many times before). We play with toys and games, obviously, but flexing your play muscles helps in other less fun areas, too. If kids don’t want to brush their teeth, we can offer to race them, and the winner gets to pick the book for storytime. If kids don’t want to clean their room, maybe we throw a sheet over our heads and declare with our best, scariest voice, “THE DIRTY ROOM MONSTER IS COMING TO EAT TOYS, BUT I’M SO TIRED I CAN ONLY EAT TOYS ON THE FLOOR. PLEASE DON’T PUT AWAY YOUR TOYS!”

Playing with kids doesn’t need to involve elaborate steps or even a large amount of time. Some of our suggestions below can be done in just five minutes. Whatever time you have today, take at least one moment to be playful with the children in your life and see for yourself. I promise you won’t regret it.

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Get Your Play On

For some adults, play comes easy. Maybe they’ve stayed in touch with that side, or it just comes naturally. However, if you struggle with playing with your kids, it’s totally normal. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it, you’re just out of practice.

Just like any skill, it can get rusty. It can help to have some ideas, so here are six ideas to jumpstart the play in your house today.

LEGO Brick Party

This web game is our house’s favorite intersection of technology and bricks. In fact, it’s the only cellphone-assisted play that continues to get regular usage over time. While LEGO Mario’s black, battery-less eyes stare at me with sadness, my kids are begging to play another round of Brick Party.

You don’t have to download anything, just visit the LEGO Brick Party. It’s a quickfire-style challenge with prompts like “Build a house.” For my kids who are still learning how to lose gracefully, a key component is that the “winners” are chosen randomly via a slot machine that spits out results like “youngest player wins” or “the house with the most windows wins.” Rounds can be played in just a few minutes, so it’s a frequent pre-bedtime activity here as well.

Build a Street

My kids are now between 4-8 years old, so while we can all play with LEGO, sometimes working on the same project results in frustration due to their different experience levels. This type of challenge of building a street lets each player work separately and together at the same time.

We like to pick a common size, say 16 studs wide, and then each person builds their dream house next to each other on a common street. If they don’t feel like building houses, we talk about what kind of things we wish we had in our neighborhood, like an arcade or a playground, and then each person gets to build one of those on our city street.

Make the Ultimate Obstacle Course

This tip comes from the LEGO Librarian and is best for builders who like things that go vroom-vroom! Each person can build their own obstacle and their own vehicle. Arrange the obstacles in a row and have the cars run the gauntlet.

Tallest Tower Time

This one is pretty self-explanatory: who can build the tallest tower? Using age-appropriate bricks, either LEGO or Duplo, see who can build the tallest tower. Give each person a baseplate or decently-sized plate, agree on the rules, and start building up.

While building you can talk about how to make the walls stronger, like staggering the bricks, and how that relates to engineering real skyscrapers. Remind players that while interior and separate floors would be nice, they use up valuable bricks that could make the tower taller. Spice it up with different prompts like a mandatory number of windows or doors or adding a time limit.

Simple Machines

As kids start to figure out how the world works, I’ve found that simple, little LEGO machines really capture their attention. They don’t need a ton of pieces, colors don’t really matter, and they’re not very complex. Think of a simple lever or a box that moves a ball around. While being playful, they will also learn about mechanisms and gears. This mini GBC module video was a great starting point for us:

LEGO has a number of simple machine builds online for free on their education site. For older players, LEGO’s builds have the benefit of providing printable instructions as well as a teacher’s guide for teaching concepts like torque and gear ratios.

Build How You Feel

Combining play with emotional learning is always a great way to engage with children. With a game like Build How You Feel, children can build something that shows how they feel. Think a rain cloud for sadness or a happy face for joy.

Put the builds in a clear jar and continue this activity over time. As we add to the jar, we can use it to check in with our feelings. You can ask questions like, “Do you feel like any of the LEGO things we’ve built?” which can help them learn to name their feelings.

Play is Endless

Need more ideas? Check out LEGO’s family page to get some inspiration to bring play into your house today (Heads up, a LEGO account is required to access everything). So take a moment to play today, no matter what your age, to celebrate the first-ever International Day of Play in style!

What would you build for the world to make it a more playful place? Let us know in the comments below.

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