Don’t miss the $100 LEGO® Education gift certificate giveaway at the end of this review! Perfect for Christmas presents!
LEGO® Education StoryStarter set is very easy to use for all our ages and a wonderful introduction to story building, language arts and creativity. Our older middle and high school children also folded into the learning. The goal is for students to create stories – both written and oral. The children can also create stories with the LEGO StoryVisualizer software, which is included. Build and create with a LEGO Education set and the computer? We knew we’d like it. And the more we experimented, the more we learned, the more we enjoyed!
What’s inside the LEGO StoryStarter Curriculum Pack?
LEGO® StoryStarter set curriculum has many exciting project activities. It contains all of the pieces required to perform the activities–including regular bricks, characters, props (tools, food, fire, etc.), settings (trees, flowers, arches), details (specialty bricks that can be used for a variety of things), and a printed teacher’s guide. The LEGO StoryStarter software is available online via your web browser.
The activities in the curriculum are divided into four sections: Getting Started, Day-toDay Storytelling, Building and Telling Stories, and Retelling and Analyzing Stories. The four activity types form a library of learning and can be either used sequentially or randomly depending on the preferences of the teacher.
- Getting Started – Focus on getting students familiar with the materials and software.
- Day-to-Day Storytelling – These activities get the teacher and students talking about real-life events, such as: birthday parties, field trips, community events, and book reviews.
- Building and Telling Stories – Students explore the basic elements of story structure (often referred to as “story arc”). The story arc is made up of different scenes representing a part of the whole story.
- Retelling and Analyzing Stories – Allows students to adapt well-known stories to their ability levels. Students can also change story elements–substituting their own beginning or ending to the story, or changing the feelings or motivations of the characters.
What Are The System Requirements?
The LEGO Education StoryVisualizer software will run on most computers made within the last 2-3 years. The system requirements are:
PC:
- 2.33GHz or faster x86-compatible processor;
- 512 MB of RAM available;
- 128 MB of graphics memory;
- Windows XP (32-bit), Vista (32-bit) or Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows 8 (running in desktop mode);
- Internet Explorer 7.0 or above (Internet Explorer 9 is recommended), Mozilla Firefox 4.0 or above, Google Chrome, Safari 5.0 or above, Opera 11;
- Adobe Flash Player 11.4 or above;
- Broadband Internet connection;
- Minimum screen resolution 1024 x 768 pixels.
Mac:
- Intel Core Duo 1.33GHz or faster processor;
- 512 MB of RAM available;
- 128 MB of graphics memory;
- Mac OS 10.6, 10.7, or 10.8;
- Safari 5.0 or above, Mozilla Firefox 4.0 or above, Google Chrome, Opera 11;
- Adobe Flash Player 11.4 or above;
- Broadband Internet connection;
- Minimum screen resolution 1024 x 768 pixels.
Pictured here are our sixth and second grade girls working on a story. They put together a scene with the LEGO bricks and next took pictures of the elements. They pulled the photos into a story.
It has every LEGO building part possibly available! It’s so much fun to make stories! ~ Littlest Girl, 2nd grade
Next, they wrote the story script – complete with action. Above is an excerpt. The StoryStarter set comes with a variety scenes and backgrounds for your learners to choose from. Or they can completely create everything on their own.
The program elements are pictorial and can be dragged and dropped into the program window to change the program.
Now it is always fun to reenact a favorite story. Especially the popular show, Duck Dynasty. The StoryStarter set has all the pieces needed to gather the family around the table and give the Lord thanks for a meal. Middle Girl said she had to use girl hair for the Robertson men and male hair for Ms. Kay’s short hair style. Uncle Si even has his cup of iced tea!
All ages were able to make changes to the program, cut and paste characters, create stories. The creativity is endless! The children are all excited about future lessons.
Where Can You Get the LEGO Education StoryStarter Curriculum Pack?
Where Can You Get the LEGO Education StoryStarter Curriculum Pack?You can get your LEGO® Education StoryStarter curriculum set at the LEGO Education website. Homeschool StoryStarter Pack Product ID: W992056
The LEGO Education Bonuses
- As a bonus, LEGO Education sends additional free activities to you via email. These “challenges” allow the LEGO Education StoryStarter curriculum to continue to have fresh, new activities to explore.
- There is a homeschool section of the LEGO Education website full of educational ideas, prompts and products for home education.
- View a video of the StoryStarter Visualizer to get even more of an idea of how it works.
We love LEGO learning so much that we’ve gathered a Pinterest board full of resources. You might like to explore these too. You’ll notice many LEGO writing prompts from our friend Mary Prather at Homegrown Learners!
~We received the LEGO StoryStarters Curriculum Pack in exchange for an honest review. We are very pleased to be a part of the LEGO Educator Official Blogging Team. All opinions are our own and the children continue to beg for LEGO Education time. We see many more LEGO learning hours in our future! Please see our disclosure policy.
Now for the Giveaway!
LEGO® Education is giving away one (1) gift certificate valued at $100.00 redeemable only on the legoeducation.us website for online purchases. Simply follow the instructions in the rafflecopter widget below to enter to win!
Did YOU know there is a LEGO Education homeschool section/community?
History lessons is a great way to incorporate Lego building I find.
Lego story starter sounds like it would be a great product to add to our curriculum, I think my son would be really excited to use this.
We use Legos and blocks all the time. We see how high of a tower we can build out of square blocks to practice fine motor skills. We use Legos in math for counting, we use them for just free time play too. 🙂
They mostly play with Legos by themselves, with no help from me, but I do use them to illustrate history lessons.
Incorporating creative building into our homeschool has been pretty easy lately, but my older son loves legos. I try to find lego pictures or books that compliment what we are studying in history or seasonal topics to encourage new ideas.
We use our Lego and Duplos in all our subjects. Counting, building historic buildings, division, creating cvc words. The kids love using ther building blocks in school.
This looks like so much fun!
I know my kids would love this!!
My kids are always building whatever we are learning about in our unit studies. My 7 year old son made a 3 foot long submarine earlier this year out of legos!
We use our LEGOs frequently for math, but I’m not very good at incorporating them into other subjects. I usually try to incorporate learning into their play rather than play into their learning.
We use them all the time to create things from history lessons and stories from reading as well as just for fun!
My son would love this.
My 5 year old son is constantly building lego projects and then writing or telling stories about them (with imaginative spelling of course).
This set has been on my dream wish list for a while. I would love to be able to finally use one in our homeschool.
I just leave legos out and available all the time. Thanks so much for the chance!!!!!
I have yet to incorporate building into lessons but it looks like so much fun!
Looks like another great way to use Legos.
My kiddos love to build anything and everything with the many LEGO’s we have. They especially like putting their sets together to build a city. I plan to use our LEGO’s for my Kindergartener for math this year and the StoryStarter set would be perfect for my older children!!!
Our boys are homeschooled and in the Jr. First Lego League. They also really enjoy writing their own stories. This would be a great kit to have, but a $100 gift card would be great too 😉
I did not know there was a homeschool section at lego.I have a son with reading difficalties, and I try to do diffrent things to help him learn to read. I think this product would be very helpful and fun for him and my other children.
So far we have been using Playmobil for storytelling, until my daughter received two sets of Lego Friends. Now I am wanting to get them into Legos for some fun with learning. Thanks for the giveaway!
We love Lego’s and homeschool..it would be fabulous to win this to help with education here.
We use them a lot with history lessons – it’s always fun to reenact things!
WOW! I did not know that this Lego program did so much!! Thanks for sharing! My 3 kids would love to use this!
We incorporate Legos in math lessons.
My kids love to do Lego animation. This would be so much fun for them.
We use them while studying history and a few years ago we used them with math.
My 7 year old autistic son loves to make everything out of Duplos/Legos, and I’m sure he would love this!
My kids build Legos while we read. We also like using Legos for some math lessons.
My son is just getting into legos and LOVES them! Legos are so versatile.
This looks like loads of fun for the kids 🙂
My kids are also huge Lego fans so that’s how we incorporate the building aspect of creativity. 🙂
We also do arts – painting, drawing, etc.
I don’t have any set way of incorporating it. My boys love anything with building and naturally gravitate to all things building during their downtime.
With legos, kinex, minecraft, snap circuits, and of course good old cardboard boxes there’s always some kind of imaginative building going on here.
We love reenacting what we are learning through imaginative building or acting. We love Legos!
We use Lego in history and science. And I just found an idea to use them to teach fractions! Whoohoo
My favorite tip for incorporating imaginative play is to give children unstructured TIME. We have plenty of toys but if I’m always giving them school assignments or carting them to extracurricular activities then they never have time to let their imaginations run away with them. So I try to have plenty of unstructured time at home to play with LEGOs or whatever suits their fancy.
We keep the Legos handy so the boys (and the girl, but mostly the boys like this stuff) to build scenes from their lessons.
My little guys are 5, 3, and 6 mos, so play IS most of our day. They are both pretty self-motivated to make things from Legos (their favorite toys) and they problem-solve things they want to make when it doesn’t come out right the first time. My 5 year old figured out how to add with his Legos–‘one Lego has 6 circles and another has four–that’s ten!’
My boys absolutely LOVE Legos!!!! We have down days that we break from books and they build and create with the legos they have. It is so FUN to watch their creative juices flow. They are both so imaginative. They would like to have more sets to be able to do more and build bigger. This story starter kit would be fantastic for them. Thank you for this.
My children often build with legos while I’m reading aloud. We also use them for math. This set looks great!
My boys are not into reading. But if I leave Lego books lying around, they will devour them.
We LOVE Legos. It would be so fun to add this to our curriculum!
My sons would love this!! I am going to start saving up curriculum funds now. 🙂
Right now lego building has often just been more of free play in our house, but my kids are still littles, the oldest is in 2nd grade. I’m trying to get things more organized to use them more as a part of our curriculum and this would help immensely! Especially with pregnancy brain!
I love to use all sorts of out of the ordinary ways to learn. My children would LOVE this!
This looks so amazing!! My guys would LOVE this!
If only I could re-BUILD my sixth grade son’s interest in school. I did not have any idea that turning eleven would bring on such a change. He does love LEGO, though, and we could also use some help in the area of Christmas presents this year 😮
Just this morning I assigned a diorama type puppet show to be made as a report of sorts for our learning. Thanks for the give away.
I have four boys who LOVE LEGO! My seven year old though would go crazy over this. Thanks for the opportunity!
What a great way to incorporate Legos into yet another area of learning. We love Legos!
We use lego bricks as counters during math, and think this looks amazing!
I don’t! More’s the pity. I need to do a better job of incorporating design and building play into our day.
since my kids are still little we use a lot of mega blocks and building wooden blocks but we can’t wait to start using legos too!
I’m fairly new to homeschooling and honestly have never thought about incorporating building into our learning day. All my children love legos and build with them frequently, I’ve just never thought to use them for learning.
We set aside a daily “quiet time” where I encourage my children to play with building materials, making it readily available to them in different stations. Each child gets their own quiet space where they can create, and they do not need to share!
My children have been Lego fans for years. We love legos.
We use our LEGOs and Duplos daily! My boys love to build with them and creat all sorts of wonderful sculptures. We keep them easily accessible so they always have access to building supplies while they play!
We haven’t accumulated a lot of Legos yet, but Christmas is coming! 😉 We use wooden blocks, sensory bins, Lincoln Logs and also (clean) materials from our recycle bin for learning/building/play.
We make up stories to go along with all of our lessons.
This would be perfect for my little Lego-loving story teller!
We use Legos a lot during math as our manipulatives. They are really helpful with fractions.
We use Legos for adding and subtracting. I wrote letters on Lego pieces and we practice making words.
Our two sons love building with LEGO. Our oldest comes up with his own creations and he will build for long periods of time. I encourage them both but rarely do I suggest what they build, it just seems to happen. Right now they are working on a movie theater screen and seating. Thank you for a chance to win.
In Literature class at our homeschool co-op our 3rd grade son needed to do a book project for The Year of Miss Agnes and I asked if he could create the project with Legos instead of the given suggestions. He loved making it and everyone loved his project.
I do like to let my boys “act out” as their narration for the day if they wish. Using LEGO, would even encourage this during their play time. What a great idea!
Thank you for having such an awesome giveaway opportunity.
Michelle
We use Legos/Duplos and natural material for crafting
LEGO is just a natural part of our family life – it doesn’t have to be incorporated. All of us enjoy it as a hobby on some level, so it was a given that it just pops up somewhere in our school time. If you need help in incorporating…there are many brilliant ideas you can find on the web, that can fit many different families and numerous subjects!
We love Legos for history, math, and now robotics. Legos always makes learning more fun!
We have used them to reenact stories but I would like to incorporate them more. We have also used them for a few math lessons.
I just leave the Legos setting out, and if something crosses my mind that they can do with Legos, we do it! We’ve made maps, flags, historical scenes, animals, and used them as manipulatives instead of using the MUS blocks.
We haven’t yet but would love to.
while we read a chapter book.
We like to teach the boys about physics while using Legos. Also, I was a student of architecture in college, so we talk about different building styles and try to imitate them or my sons will come up with their own “styles.” It is fun and educational!
My boys use Legos a lot to do battle reenactments and we have also used them to build human body systems.
we use Legos for building things.
LEGO has always been the best. Love how they incorporate and value education in their endeavors.
We have a large variety of Legos & Playmobil, which facilitates the kids tying together what we’re currently studying with them in their free play.
My oldest plays with legos solo and has recently taken part in a lego engineering class, my middle though would love the story telling aspect of this. She is very big into play pretend
This is such a neat tool!! I will be checking out the website.
I don’t do anything specific for my kiddos to incorporate their learning. But it is not unusual after reading or watching something new, I will find them on the floor in the bedroom (with the legos) re-enacting or at least creating something from the new material seen/heard. I guess just giving them time after something new is what I would suggest.
This looks so cool. Legos are so fun!
We act out your history lessons in order to cement what they’ve learned. I’ve also noticed that once we’ve done that I will start seeing some of those ideas in their writing. Related to building, my sons consistently use Legos to jumpstart their writing…either about what they’ve built or what they’ve pretended.
Using the Kingdoms set to teach about the middle ages. My boys loved setting up battles for the castles and exploring the village.
We find that play dough is a valuable tool to recreating objects we learn about in our History lessons and we use Legos to build the cities/and act out the lesson they may be working on. In fact, we are studying the Great Wall of China and my son has built his own wall using Legos!
We use Legos in history lessons.
My kids love Legos. we use the with our history lessons.
Learning through play! Looks like we should get this one!
My little boy would absolutely LOVE this! (and I know 2 little girls who would, too!)
If we are reading a story, I always try to get my kids to build something that they hear in the story.
we are just getting started with legos so this would be perfect for us. we have very few and need a hard core collection for homeschool group!
My kids love Lego’s. They love stories. So the two together is great.
My boys LOVE Legos. This would be an awesome addition to our homeschool curriculum.
My boys love Legos. We could use this for homeschooling as well. We learn by being creative.
As a mom of three boys, I find that they actually “listen” better when their little hands are busy. I encourage them to build and play (quietly, not interactively) while I do read alouds and they really do retain information better that way!!
10 yo DD ALL about Lego these days. She would absolutely LOVE to win this! =)
My son loves Megabloks and Legos. We use them as manipulatives for math mostly, but he also uses them to build towns, roads, towers, people, vehicles, etc.
We love to use lego stuff.
We try to act out some of our history lessons at this point. I think it would be fun to use the story starter set to do this in the future.
I just let my son go at it and build what he likes. That is the best thing I can do so far since I don’t have many sets or anything from Lego Education yet….
We love Legos over here! I was eyeing this bit there is no way we could afford it! Super cool! Great giveaway.
I was just looking at this when researching for a conference I did. I was amazed and so excited by the prospect of it. For my son he expresses creativity through drawing. I adapt that into 3D whenever possible with the LEGO brick.
My son makes up the coolest stories and/or back stories to go with his creations. This would be the next great step! I didn’t even know it was out there! Thank you!
We like to read a story and then build things from the story – animals, people, or buildings!
My kids make up plays and reenactments for our entertainment. They love LEGOs too. I think they’d love this storystarter set. Thanks for the giveaway!
My kids love to use their imagination while building with legos. They come up with all types of stories to go along with their creations. This story starter would be a perfect addition to our colleciton.
My 4 year old has taken an interest into Lego’s recently. I think this would be the perfect items to get him hungry for learning and keeping his interest for longer than 15 minutes. It would be absolutely wonderful to win!
My kids and I love using LEGOs for math, history, break time, and keeping their minds and hands occupied while it is quiet time! Looks like an amazing program!
we use legos in a representational way for his projects he builds ideas and models with them. I think this would be a great addition because he could also recreate scenes from his favorite stories besides creating his own stories.
We do a lot of story reenactment in history. This story starter would add a fun dimension!
My son already loves legos and makes up lego stories a lot. I’ve looked at this but wondered if it was worth the money. I think we would love it.
The kids play out their lessons with different building items all the time. My job is to provide fun stuff to use and the time to play.
Our is mostly for free play, but my boys enjoy their Legos!!
Legos are a must when learning in this household. 🙂
My boys LOVE legos and play with them all the time! We use a lot of manipulatives to keep their attention and make learning concrete.
This is a great tool! Thank you for such a great giveaway and a review! It is always nice to know how things work in real life with real kids!
My kids would love it!
I would love to have this for my kids!
We participate in a Lego Club that incorporates a lot of science and math! We use Legos for play and for manipulatives!
We haven’t really done any building in our schooling yet but we would love to! We just got mine craft for the girls to use so we will see how that goes. Would love to use Legos though!
Wow! I have never heard of this. This is a great to inspire creativity.
My kids play with Legos when I read to them. They like to recreate historical events,
We often ‘pretend to be’ whatever we are studying … elaborate, made up games/ scenarios …
Legos have been a great addition to our Homeschool. They’ve come to the rescue many times in Math. This would be an amazing addition to studies as my youngest is just getting into writing and storytelling.
When my kids are having a hard time paying attention when I am doing read a clouds, I get out logos and have them build something in or about the story.
My kids like to build anything that comes to mind, usually something that goes along with our read aloud books.
Would love to win!!! Looks wonderful!!!! 🙂
We have nine children and 7 officially school age thus far. Sometimes it is helpful to set the kindergartener and the twin preschoolers to task on building something with blocks or duplos while working with the older children. I have two sets of wooden castle building blocks the children may get for Christmas that I got on after Christmas clearance last year!
All my son plays with and uses for homeschool is Lego’s, we incorporate them into everything even reading and math!
Sure it’s simple, but I give them time. I don’t schedule every moment of our school day. So if they have free time and want to play with dolls, LEGOS or something else, great! Luckily they lean far toward imaginative play.
We just started homeschooling, so we haven’t done much of that yet. Going to give it a try for math!
I haven’t had the kids try to build anything specifically related to what we’re learning but they use LEGOs nearly every day and I do see things in their building reflected from what we’ve talked about or seen lately.
We usually use Legos for free play, but I love the idea of linking them with our homeschool lessons. My kids would love that. Their creativity amazes me.
We like to build Lego models of things we read in novels or from the personalities and battles that we study in history.
My kids like to reenact favorite passages from their history lessons through Legos. I also like to use creative play to teach math skills with games and “story problems”
I allow my son to build while I do read alouds. 🙂
What a wonderful learning tool. I’m so happy to be learning about it just in time for Christmas!
With four special needs boys, who all love legos, this would be an awesome addition to our homeschool!
We use legos for many things as well. Usually in math but this is a fab idea!
My son LOVES Lego and would go crazy over this! I am a homeschoolin mama who would so use this! Thank you!
We have used legos for math lessons. The Lego Story Starter Set would be awesome for my son who is hesitant to write, but loves legos!