Building a Lego Technic Bulldozer for Spring Break
David has really enjoyed building Lego toys especially since last year. He was more of a Pokemon fan before and have collected a lot of Pokemon stuff and toys. Now, I can see he is turning his gaze on more substantial toys and I really prefer it that way. When one builds an age appropriate Lego toy, you're not only creating the final product out of hundreds if not thousands of varied pieces but it also builds intrinsic skills in you that improves your ability to follow directions and solve problems. Once you do 'free-style' like what the two kids also do with their other Lego blocks, then it helps you be more creative.
I can understand now why there are so many AFOLs around (Adult Fan of Lego). David can easily do models with less than a thousand pieces but when he did his Lego Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer which has 1367 pcs., he asked me for some help. I guess he just needed a relief since he wanted it finished asap. Well, I enjoyed doing it too thus I got this Lego Motorized Bulldozer #8275 (technically for me) which was the winner of the 2007 Nuremberg Toy Fair Innovation Award and runner-up in the 2007 Toy of the Year in South Africa. I let him build it with me and after a lot of hours here and there in a span of 3 or 4 days, we finished it without any problem. The two kids now enjoy playing with it especially that it's remote controlled. It's also big and quite heavy. It was just technically more astounding since there were a lot of different kinds of gears and moving parts including cams and pistons and there was no room for error and you have to follow the instructions to the letter. You just have to be precise all through out the building process and when we were done there were only a handful of small pieces left. I kept reminding David about it since if we have made a mistake, then we will surely lack some important pieces and we have to find where we went wrong and that usually takes more time than building one straightaway. I'm looking at some Lego Mindstorms too that includes robotics, sensors and programming and you really design your own but I found out that there are several books about it and I've seen 'you tube' videos of people building really super cool stuff. There's really more to Lego than kids' stuff. David and I are now looking forward to building more Lego kits.
Video made during assembly.
Finally.
Video of the finished Bulldozer.
Skywire
2 comments:
Ayi
Dito, merong camps for lego mindstorms at the local university. Baka meron din dyan. Good intro into robotics ang mindstorm, I heard. Couple of friend's kids compete in robotics having played with mindstorms before. Bet you had more fun with the bulldozer than the kids : ).
Binay
Yes, I have already checked the mindstorms and also found out there are a number of books about it at Amazon. I still have some Lego Technic models I'm considering for summer activity with the kids and there are two new Technic models coming out in August. After that, I'd probably go to mindstorms. Thanks for letting me know about the camps.
I really had fun building it with David and he's really enjoying playing with it now. He just finished a Lego Technic Dune Buggy/Tractor about two weeks ago. I let him build it all by himself.
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