LEGO”S New Market: Mindfulness for Stressed-out Adults

In a January 16, 2020 Washington Post article, Abha Bhattarai writes about LEGO’s growing demographic of stressed-out adults.  One person’s LEGO time is described as a “kind of guided meditation.”   The author of the LEGO book, Build Yourself Happy: The Joy of Lego Play, calls her LEGO pieces “therapeutic.” LEGO is capitalizing on the growing adult market by improving their instructions and introducing new lines of models to provide a “joyful creative challenge.” Eric Honour, founder of Honourcode, a Systems Engineering training company now owned by Applied Technology Institute, LLC, has used LEGOs for years in a couple of the training classes.  Students build robots using Mindstorms Robotic Invention System 2.0. Both successes and failures with the final LEGO robots results in great fun and a huge learning experience. ATI courses which incorporate the Mindstorm RIS 2.0 Lego Sets include: Applied Systems Engineering has four different groups building LEGO robots to interact as a whole.  The LEGO exercise demonstrates concept, methods, requirements, system architecting, product design and implementation, integration and test, and leadership and collaboration. Applied Test & Evaluation uses LEGOs in groups for a Test Challenge:  Plan for T&E, build the robot per instructions, then follow their T&E plan. What an amazing toy!  Fun for kids of all ages.  Valuable as a means to relax, to collaborate, to test, and to learn to better work with yourself and others. %MCEPASTEBIN%