What Do You Do with Your Kids' Legos After They Have Completed the Model?

Ditto Melissa J.
Sometimes my son would "keep" a few special ones on his dresser or nightstand, but mostly he just played with them until they started falling apart, at which point they went back into the bin to become other things!

They are played with till they are in pieces and then the pieces go in the general bin to become other things.

When I was a young lad, I made the "model" for the first time, then made the secondary "model"....and then they all went into a box. Not put together, but in the hundreds of little peices.

Then I'd get a new one - put it together, take it apart and put it in the box.

And then I'd get out the box, and use my IMAGINATION to make something totally different and new!

I played with legos for a good 5-7 years - had thousands of them that seem to have disappeared during one of mom's basement cleanouts. :)

We have some shelves in the playroom and they get displayed until he wants to destroy them to build something new.
As a fello nick-nack hater I have just had to take a deep breath and look at it as his treasure:)
Probably not what you wanted to hear, but that is how we handle them at our house.

They don't stay made for more than 10 minutes! I will usually put all the pieces into a giant ziploc, labled with black marker as to what it makes. In an ideal world, they would stay like that to be rebuilt again later. But turhtfully, that doesn't last. They end up back in the lego bin with all the rest of the legos.

I grew up in the era before Lego sets [yes, pre-Star Wars, Legos were just building blocks, not intended to build specific things], so I've always seen them as a collection of pieces which can be made into anything. In our house, our son will follow the directions and build the model. He will savor the result for a few days, and then it gets taken apart and all the pieces go into a plastic storage box with the pieces from all his other Lego sets. Then, he uses the pieces to build contraptions of his own design, usually little planes or tanks. Legos can be a wonderful way for children to develop creativity, so perhaps you can see if your son might be interested in disassembling a few models and trying to build other things from those pieces.

My son has a knack for building. He is highly skilled in the "spacial perception" arena (e.g. builders, engineers, architects) but really struggles with reading & writring. So his legos were his "thing" as a kid (and K'nex). If he spent 7 hours putting together an amazing Star Wars ship or his own unique creation I'm not going to make him dismantle it. We actually went to Home Depot and got shelves & standards put up about 6 shelves in his room - which cost about $60 total - so he could display all his awesome work. In 2nd grade he made a 4 ft tall K'nex ferris wheel and his teacher (who I loved) encouraged him to bring it in. Although it was quite a trick getting it to school (another reason I love minivans) we put it on a serving tray and got it there. He was able to be proud of an amazing accomplishment for a 7 year old (the thing actually worked with a battery powered motor). How could I make him dismantle that? It was on top of our computer cabinet for about a year (not exaggerating).
His creations all collected dust - but I think it was more important for me, as his mom, to allow him to show off and admire his hard work and skill than to have a perfectly decorate home.
I think our job as moms is to find that spark in our kid, the thing they are excellent at that they love, and encourage them in that. My son will be 13 next week and ahrdly plays with his legos any more - I miss the days he'd sit on the living floor for hours and resurface with this amazingly complicated build - having accomplished something that very few of his friends could do.

hang a shoe bag on the back of his door that has clear pockets he can put them in there. but in the long run this is the best thing to do

get a long rubbermade bin that is about 6 inches deep with a lid they are about 4 feet long and 2 feet wide. put them under his bed and he can slide it in and out. that way he can just set his creation inside it. you will find as he goes that he will start letting them fall apart and then just throwing them in and making other stuff. a huge bin of legos is the best toy your kid can have it keeps them occupied for ours. we actually liked the big bins better anyway as then they can use their own creativity. my 8 year old grandson is actually sitting at my kitchen table playing with the same legos my 24 year old son played with 20 years ago

Maybe you could take pictures & start a photo album of all his creations. Much. Smaller. :)

Each kid has a mondo basic set (Thousand pieces) that they use for their own creations. They also have the specific themed sets. We don't mix the pieces from the themed sets with the general set and have kept the boxes but use ziplocks to prevent loss.

When the kids build the theme sets, they display them on their shelves or play with them until they fall apart and then start over. Only a couple of times I've had to "partially dismantle" some creations to store them before our destructive toddler cousins came over. But I'd strategically take protruding parts off only and would store them carefully in their boxes, so it wouldn't take as much time to rebuild when danger was averted. LOL.

With the general set, the kids mix the pieces up and have no problems tearing them down at the end of the day unless they're working on something "big." But for the most part, I find I can store their creations whole inside the storage box. They seem to like making vehicles more than buildings, and those tend to be smaller than their buildings so they store fairly well.

Good question by the way. I've often wondered what other people do. I find that most parents of Lego lovers have more than one set. That's a lot of pieces to manage.

One of my friends has a Lego lover at home, but her kid has managed to spread pieces from one end of the house to the other. Their home looks like Legoland and all of the themed sets are mixed up, never to be rebuilt again.

I'd flip if my kids did that considering how expensive they are...so I made it a house rule that when themed sets are done and they're bored with them or they fall apart, the pieces MUST get put in their ziplocks and put back in their original boxes, ASAP.

So far, this has worked great. We never have anyone crying or wondering where stuff has disappeared. And with more than one Lego lover with duplicate sets in the house, we have yet to have anyone fighting or accusing the other of stealing or mixing up parts from sets. Whew!

We treat them like puzzles. He put it together once, plays with it, hopefully all the pieces are still there when he's done and get put in a ziplock back (that doesn't always happen). I week or so later he puts it back together again and plays with it again.

He loves puzzles!

My son LOVES legos and our collection has grown quite large. He likes to play with them, take them apart and rebuild them. But he also doesn't like to mix the pieces form the different sets together. My solution was to put each set in a ziploc bag with its directions, that way when he is building an rebuilding everything stays together. Then I put all the bags into a plastic tub which is stored on the shelf. Then they are out of sight, not all over the playroom (my basement) and easily accessed when its lego time. Hope this helps!

I take a photo, then the creation goes on top of the bookshelf shelf in the Lego room. We have an entire room dedicated to legos. The floor is covered with bins and piles of legos sorted by style size and color. My son makes some huge creations which then go on the desk in the study, or on the counter at the top of the stairs. It gets disassembled when my son needs the pieces to make something new. I also have videos of my sons demonstrating their lego creations so we can send these to their grandparents. The creations are "saved" this way and the legos can be taken apart and reused.

My son has two shelves from IKEA (about $65 each ,wooden). They have 8 cubbies each . He keeps them on display in his room . He also has a bucket for just play . I wish our daughter was organized with her junk !

you all are so smart! I definately learned some stuff from this post.

I was going to contribute that Lego actually makes special bins to store them in, rubbermaid ish, and even a little plastic dresser like thing. there is also a giant head that is supposed to sort the legos by size, you dump them all in and they fall through different sized screens smallest pieces on top, biggest on the bottom.

i also pinned a cute sewing projectf for legos from Pinterst, It's like a huge circle of fabirc to use as a play mat and there edges have a draw string so you can gather the whole circle mat up into a huge bag and just drag it off to a closet. hard to explain.

we prefer the under the bed box and the tossed into the huge bin of misc pieces at our house.

Decorate the bathroom? Yeah, I did that for my kids. (Not anymore - they are gone now) but there were so many!

Smiles!
Dawn

I am the one that makes the original creation and our son will play with it for a while and then slowly tear it apart and recreate it. he has about 10 sets and they are in thousands of pieces in the lego bins. He hasn't asked for me to create any of the original objects (thank goodness!) but he sure has made some neat original creations.

I know someone that would glue them as they built them so they wouldn't be so fragile and they displayed them on shelving in their son's room. Only downside is you can't take apart and recreate.

So far, all of my son's sets are fairly intact and on his bookshelf, the space shuttle collection is on a small desk in our basement, and some assorted sets are on trays. My son is completely crazy about building Legos, but rather than take apart a set he's already put together, he wants a brand new one to build!! I keep one panel of the box so we have a picture of the complete set, along with the instructions (when Daddy has to help fix one that falls on the floor). My son likes to keep them intact to play with but also as a concrete example of his accomplishment.

My 10 year old is really into the models. I had to put a bookcase in his room just to display them. He makes little dioramas with them. I'm not terribly fond of them, but it's for him, not me. I'll put up with it. I'm sure he will be done with them in a year or so. We have learned we don't need to save the instruction because they are available on line. My 7 year old prefers to make his own creations, and is ok with taking them apart and putting them back in teh bucket after playing.