International Focus: LEGO play, worldwide

Until recently, the extended period of lockdowns has seen children spending less time in early education as well as interacting with others outside of the family. Fewer opportunities to relate to and interact with others means that an increasing number of children now need extra support for their communication or how to approach different social situations.

According to Ofsted, this has resulted in delays in younger children at school for language and vocabulary, in turn causing them to struggle with social interaction and self-confidence, such as not knowing how to take turns and finding it harder to develop strong friendships.

This phenomenon has impacted all children and is not exclusive to those with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND): many more children require specific speech and language support than are often identified by the SEND system in the UK. However, there are many fun and creative ways that adults who work with children and young people can encourage communication, social interaction and language learning.

Play is fundamental to child development, both for learning, emotional wellbeing and development of skills. LEGO Foundation research from the UK and other countries suggests that children learn best through play – it is a fantastic way to engage the holistic skills children need to thrive. Our research has found that LEGO® play can be a fun way to support children’s speech and language and social development.

Communication with play

At Play Included, we have drawn on the latest research in neurodiversity and learning through play and partnered with academic experts and autism consultants to develop the LEGO play-based Brick-by-Brick® programme, which is endorsed by the LEGO Foundation.

The programme offers children and young people positive and meaningful experiences in a playful and accepting environment. Children take part in collaborative LEGO play sessions, where most importantly, they are able to have fun. This type of play can also help to develop their speech and communication skills, confidence, and social and emotional wellbeing. The programme is known to children as “Brick Club”.

Children who take part in Brick Clubs can take turns or work together to build LEGO models, either by following instructions or creatively designing their own models. As they build the sets with their peers, children often form meaningful relationships as they talk with one another about what they are building.

Many of the speech and language therapists we have partnered with acknowledge that most of the children they work with could benefit in some way from collaborative LEGO play, especially because the approach complements the activities that are often undertaken as part of common speech therapy practices.

A safe space for all children

The Brick Club format is flexible and its child-led approach means that it can be tailored to the group’s strengths, interests and needs. For younger children, Brick Club facilitators can leverage children’s mutual love of LEGO bricks as an opportunity to develop their communication skills and vocabulary during the collaborative building process. All of this takes place as the children enjoy quality playtime where they can engage with one another.

Autistic children have the same needs and right as all other children to feel accepted. A different way of communicating can make them become misunderstood by others. Research shows that autistic individuals often communicate effectively when they are together with other autistic individuals. Many children share a love of LEGO model building, which is a fun and enjoyable way for them to share a focus and communicate together about what they are doing.

By facilitating a smaller group environment, children can communicate in a way that works for them, and in a way that allows everyone to understand each other. This safe space helps to reduce any anxiety children may feel around others and enables them to be themselves and feel confident in joining conversations, asking questions and practising new words and phrases, without judgment.

Language development

There are many other potential positive outcomes for children and young people who attend Brick Club. Some of the varied developments we have seen among participants around the world are active listening and language learning. Building LEGO models together can also facilitate opportunities for children to overcome challenges and talk through difficult situations, allowing them to work together to problem solve.

Visual aids can also be used alongside the LEGO models to help support children to talk about their feelings in Brick Club, which can then be implemented by the children in other social settings, such as the classroom or at home. Collaborative LEGO play also offers children the opportunity to experiment with flexibility in language, as they describe the colour, size, shape and position of LEGO bricks they are using.

We saw first-hand the development of children’s communication skills when we partnered with Kinedu, an early years child development platform, to pilot Play Included’s Brick-by-Brick programme for the first time in Mexico, where recent studies have shown that nearly 40 per cent of young children in socially deprived areas have delayed language and communication skills.

During the Mexican pilot, the professionals that facilitated Brick Club sessions noted the individual changes in each of the children and the group dynamic. Some children were anxious at first, as they didn’t know the other children and were unfamiliar with the concept of Brick Club. However, over time, those who were more anxious drew closer to the rest of the group and began to engage with the other children. They also noticed improvements in the participating children’s social engagement with some children who were eager to communicate and play with the others.

By facilitating more play and fun in learning, we can ensure that children and young people gain the confidence and skills to communicate with others and build meaningful friendships in their own way, allowing them to thrive and improve their social and emotional wellbeing, one brick at a time.

• Dr Gina Gómez de la Cuesta is a clinical psychologist and director and co-founder of Play Included, a social enterprise that aims to strengthen and scale up LEGO play-based learning for neurodivergent children and has trained facilitators in 40 countries
  
  

Brick-by-Brick programme supports communication skills

Laura is a speech and language therapist based in Manchester, who previously spent 10 years in the NHS and now delivers private speech and language therapy for children.

In 2021, Laura was working with a young autistic boy whose communication skills were limited. As a practitioner, Laura was already familiar with the concept of LEGO® therapy and knew it could be beneficial to children’s language development.

Laura began to research how she could develop her expertise in this area. After some research, she decided to register for Play Included’s Brick-by-Brick® programme training courses.

Laura completed the Level 01 Initiate and the Level 02 Facilitator Brick-by-Brick training courses. She says: “I felt more empowered to be able to deliver the Brick-by-Brick approach with the family that I was working with. The course content resonated with me and the way that I wanted to work.”

Following her training, Laura collaborated with A Team Hub, a local community centre in Leigh offering special educational needs services, to deliver her first Brick Club. The A Team Hub supported Laura by securing funding for the sessions, identifying the children who would most benefit from the programme, registering them for the sessions, and providing a safe and secure space where the Brick Club could take place.

Laura and the A Team Hub ran a 10-week Brick Club pilot scheme, inviting six neurodivergent children aged from eight to 11 years old to participate. Each of the children were diagnosed with ADHD or autism.

Laura notes that for neurodivergent children, Brick Club doesn’t just provide a safe space, but a fun club that they can attend independently.

She says: “At Brick Club, the children have access to all the same kind of social and problem-solving opportunities available at other after-school clubs, but without it needing to be modified for them to be able to join in, since it has been designed for their needs.”

Laura saw that the programme’s method of facilitating play also improved the children’s confidence. “The idea of play and making it fun is key – as we got better at facilitating these two things in the sessions, we saw better outcomes in the children because they felt less stressed, anxious or jittery,” she adds.

FURTHER READING

• Early neurological development and nutritional status in Mexican socially deprived contexts, Pone Journal, June 2022
  
  

• Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective, Crompton, C. J., Ropar, D., Evans-Williams, C. V., Flynn, E. G., & Fletcher-Watson, S. (2020)
  
  

• Neuroscience and learning through play: a review of the evidence, The LEGO Foundation, November 2017