Most LEGO books on the market either show you creations people have made or are books of instructions to build specific creations. 365 Things to Do with LEGO Bricks is different than most of those books by being a book of ideas of things to build without specific directions of how to build, just giving ideas.
Each page of the book is broken out into boxes with a numbered activity. With titles like “Build a coaster puzzle,” “Make a colorful still life,” and “Race across a river,” each activity involves some building, but can include more as well. Each instruction box has a general direction of what to do for that box and pictures to illustrate the idea further.
The ideas are all varied and involve some building, but some are more involved as well. Some are games (like tic-tac-toe and mastermind) and some encourage going outside and doing things (like photographing minifigures outside). The variety of projects are a good inspiration of things that could be built out of LEGO and what could be done, rather than just build static scenes, buildings, and vehicles.
Embedded in the cover is a small electronic device that can be used to further increase the usage of the books. The little red rectangular has an LCD screen and four buttons. The question mark button picks a random number between 1 and 365, so the reader can pick an activity from the book at random to do. The yellow button allows the reader to set a countdown timer, to make the building more competitive. The blue button is a stopwatch to time how long a task takes the reader. And the final green button is a pause and start button to stop the clocks. The addition of this little timer/randomizer adds a game function that can turn any of the activities in the book into a competition between multiple builders.
It’s worth noting that while there are many great building ideas in the book, there are no instructions and part lists, so the reader is left to their own LEGO collections to build the different ideas in the book. The builds in the fun are beautiful and whimsical, but not everyone has the LEGO collections that the builders featured in the book have, and may be a little limited in what they build compared to the creations in the book.
365 Things to Do with LEGO Bricks is a fun collection of ideas of things to build with LEGO elements without being as restrictive as following the directions found in other books and sets. I recommend this book for anyone looking for new things to build and for those looking to build with children outside of the sets sold by LEGO, but be sure to have a good collection of LEGO bricks before you start.
