>>>Glad to see this stuff. I was in a Lego store and couldn't find anything appropriate for the kid in question.
>>>
>>>Tamar
>>
>>Yepp, it's a pain.
>>
>>Even the lego site is a problem. Try to find additional parts to the mindstorm system.
>
>The original lego was too abstract, it was a cool medium (by McLuhan's definition), you could make just about everything from the same parts. The first parts that were off the mark were doors and windows, which pushes you into building houses. Then came the wheels, exhaust pipes etc etc... pretty much instead of using your imagination you get to just assemble the pieces as shown.
>
>Luckily, when our youngest was at the age, she didn't care for any instructions and photos of samples, she veered away in her own direction and created magnificent (yet still simple) contraptions, asymmetrical vehicles (or symmetrical, where turning the driver backwards made as much sense as forwards)... and I already had a digital camera to preserve some of them.
>
>Next time we get grandchildren visiting, I think I'll just buy a few bags of random pieces and mix them up. See what they'll make.

One of my sons loved the kits. For him, building something by following instructions was a great joy. To my surprise, he's not an engineer.

We have thousand of Lego pieces in our basement playroom and they've long since gotten all mixed up. While we still have the instruction books (yes, someone here is a little compulsive <g>), to follow one, a kid would have to dig through multiple containers to find the parts.

Tamar