Is this normal? He could spend hours building things out of his imagination and calling us to look at them. His kindergarten teacher advised us to get him to draw, paints and `basteln`..rather he prefers legos. I have tried. I need some advice please.

Let him play with Lego. He will use other toys when he gets bored of it

I've got 2 lego addicts at home, don't see any harm in it myself. They are happy & using their imagination so what is the problem?

Great idea let him go for it!

Lego builds the imagination he might become an engineer and get paid loads. Our children have even had the school teaching computer robotics using Lego at age 12-15

I even know 40+ year old kids that still play with it.

Not sure why you are even questioning or concerned lego has to be one of the most brilliant ways to encourage creativity and exploring

Normal here! even at 6am...:-) Love salt spreading flying chitty chitty bang bang quad bike monster truck cranes....

Are you actually worried about this? Set him loose on those things! I have a friend whose son was building robots with Lego Mindstorms at age 7. I know I preferred building things (with Legos, wood, whatever) at 5 over drawing or painting. I still remember getting a Lego space station at 5 years old- I felt like the Mac; only other vivid memories of remarkable gifts from that age was a Snoopy doll () and several years later my first pocketknife. Legos rule.

He'll be fine. My son spend years with wooden trains. As some people see it, it's good that they can spend hours focused on an activity, in theory that means they could be able to pay the same level of attention to school related activities.

Our grandson also spends hours building Lego - especially if he teams up with his beloved Grand-dad, the two of them a re unstoppable.
It's great stuff - our daughters were the same at his age.

But yes, I'd say variety is the spice of life, so why not encourage him to join you in doing other stuff too. Loved the days when I used to do collages with bits of string, feathers, pasta, anything, plaster casts, playdough, scissors, and so on. Why not set up some stuff like that on the table next to him and start 'playing' yourself and making stuff - he might well choose to join you. Just so he can see there are alternatives too- and if he doesn't take the 'bait' no worries- plenty of time for him.

The only reason for even slightly worrying about this would be if he was obsessively playing with the lego in a repetitive and unimaginative manner (ie. always making the same thing or always just building the same tower of bricks and then never using the item to promote further play).

If he is playing with it imaginatively, if you see him using the constructions he has made as further imaginative toys to act out scenes (like building a dumper truck and playing with it to pick up lego rocks) and if he likes to involve you (calling on you to admire his handiwork/explain it to you is a great communication aspect of this supposedly lonely pastime) then I really would not worry in the slightest.

I guess your teacher is just saying it would be nice if he could do some other activities, but do you know what - I would just nod nicely and let him do his thing! He has kindergarten to introduce him to the joys of painting and sticking and glueing. Hometime is the time to cut him some slack and let him indulge in his true pleasures in life. Find a class buddy who similarly likes lego and invite him/them round for lego building parties. Then it will truly be a team building, motiviational, negociating skills promoting, working together, friendship creating past time.

How lovely.

PS my comments in the first paragraph apply equally to any other "obsessive" playing with a particular toy. It is how they play with it that is important, not the fact that they play and play and play and play ....

Perfectly normal - describes half of my class on any given year. Your child is being creative, developing numeracy concepts, increasing fine motor skills, presumably being sociable ( sharing with other children) using language. That takes care of all areas of a EY school curriculum.

Encourage him to save pocket money for purchasing more lego ( the bits with motors makes it exciting) and you are adding lessons in delayed gratification, budgeting, economics...... electronics...... :-)

is he using the smaller size lego or the big 'duplo' sort?

My 4 year old was given for his birthday a 'starter' set of block lego with one plate, and he's creating his own stuff...

The irony is that his big brother is completely 'lego mad' (has been from about age 6.5) and has an embarrassing amount of lego - yet the younger one, he loves most his 'own' set....

For me, the bigger evil is DVD, TV, Computer Games, handheld computer games... lego is good for fine motor/finger strength, concentration and cognitive skills...

I'm pretty sure he does plenty of 'basteln' (art/craft/glueing/pasting) at school... the 'staple' of traditional kindergarten teachers (and a core curriculum in Switzerland)...

Thank you all for all the wonderful comments and advices. My heart is at rest.

...in my case, this was when I turned about 14!

I absolutely loved Legos as a child -- without a doubt, they were the toys that I used all the time. My mother recalls me disappearing into my bedroom for entire afternoons with my big box of Legos and not hearing a peep out of me for hours on end.

They're terrific toys for kids -- they are great outlets for your child's creativity and imagination.

They've gotten a lot more sophisticated since I was a youngster. I nearly had a heart-attack the other day when I saw one of the advanced Technics kits in a shop window with a CHF695- price tag!

And what's wrong with playing Lego? My kids loved it and my son played with them until he was 12.

Totally normal. I used to loving lego myself as a kid, and I am normal - at least I think I am.