LEGO Education is easy to miss if you are used to browsing retail shelves or following the latest LEGO themes. For decades, LEGO has quietly produced sets designed specifically for schools, often sold through educational channels and rarely marketed to the general public. These kits prioritized exploration and reuse over display, and unless you were an educator, you probably never encountered them. That’s what makes their “Build, Solve, Invent” series so interesting. For the first time, LEGO Education has released a full series of science-based sets specifically designed for kids to learn and play at home. These aren’t curriculum boxes or teacher-only tools. They’re meant to be opened, played with, rebuilt, and experimented on wherever kids (and adults) normally build LEGO. pictured here are the four new lEGO Education sets from the “build, solve, invent” series. Look at those beautiful boxes! As someone who works in education, I was immediately curious...

On the morning of January 12th, myself and the rest of the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) community received an email entitled, “Announcing a New Era for FIRST LEGO League.” I didn’t read it at first—the theme of this season has been archaeology, and the word era made it seem like it was about next season. After receiving a few messages, I could tell I’d missed something big, and upon re-reading, it became apparent the email was, as far as children’s competitive robotics leagues go, a bombshell. What followed wasn’t just a platform update but a foundational shift that could fundamentally change who gets to participate in FIRST LEGO League. The announcement outlined major changes to the technology platform used by FLL, with a relatively short timeline for teams to adapt. While change isn’t new to FLL, it’s hard to overstate how disruptive this one feels—especially in a space where progress usually...

For each issue of BrickJournal Magazine, the BrickNerd team creates instructions for a LEGO mini-model to go with the theme of the cover story. For a recent issue about things in the air, we created a LEGO airship island. Taking to the Air When it comes to flying vehicles, nothing captures the imagination quite like airships soaring in the sky. They instantly transport you to a realm of wonder and possibility where craggy mountains peek above the clouds and waterfalls careen to the world below. For our LEGO airship island, we wanted to create something that felt airy with lots of negative space—an island that looks like it is balancing delicately in the sky. To achieve this, we used a strong base made from mudguards that are locked into place with SNOT bricks. To make the build more playful, we used bright colors to be fun and eye catching. Lime green...

At an exhibition in France near Bordeaux (organized by Brick Team Aquitaine), I was impressed by a diorama using the properties of some LEGO colors that react to a UV blacklight. I thought that this strangely fluorescent approach to LEGO colors could be the subject of a great interview so I reached out to Cyrille Bouquinet who built this glowing Galaxy Squad diorama. Sam: Hello Cyrille, could you introduce yourself? Cyrille: I am 46 years old, and I am from Rochefort in France. I've been playing with LEGO since I was three years old, and I can't tell you which set I got first. It must have been a Fabuland set but I was quickly attracted by Classic Space. I also got hooked on the Castle range in 1984 and since then I’ve remained faithful to these two ranges. The Middle Ages and science fiction are my two main areas of...

Strolling the aisles of Brickworld Chicago is always an experience. Rows and rows of tables, each with LEGO MOCs more impressive than the next, invite the public to lose themselves in a sea of bricks that is hard to stand out from. Yet every year there is an individual that manages to do just so, and so it came as no surprise that I found myself returning to Chris Rozek’s display again and again. No stranger to Brickworld—he is featured on their website, rocking a life-size brick-built guitar, and has been nominated for the coveted Brickworld Master award before—Chris is what I’d consider an anomaly in the AFOL community. He refers to himself as an AFOOL, an Adult Fan Of Old LEGO, and as such, is a respected collector of some of the oldest and most obscure LEGO items out there. His basement’s display cases are filled to the brim with...