Dinosaur Legos Set Stage for Quality Memories

Posted by Joe Vandal
July 16, 2006

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It was only $20 at Toys ‘R Us, but this Lego set we got our 6-year old boy for Easter proved to be a real winner in our family.

We had bought other generic Lego sets and Star Wars sets before, and occasionally played with them. However, this set contained two instruction books that used clear graphical pictures to explain how to build complicated dinosaurs. The first book explained about six easier dinosaurs, and the other book explained the two hardest creatures: the large elephant and the large triceratops.

We kept the pieces from this set in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag so the specialty pieces didn’t get lost with the other Lego sets. We started with the easier book, worked our way through all the dinosaurs, and then graduated to the second book with the elephant and the triceratops. The first few dinosaurs were a little slow as we both learned the unique pieces, but the more we created the faster and easier those dinosaurs came together.

I kept involving my son with finding the pieces the instructions called for, and then pointing out how they went together. Soon enough, my son was taking the lead in analyzing the pictures for what pieces we needed to build each section, and taking the lead in building each section.

There are only enough pieces in the set for one dinosaur at a time, so he quickly learned one of my favorite phrases, “easy come, easy go”. If you have a child that has a hard time letting go of material things, this Lego set may help.


I highly recommend this Lego set because it provided several hours of valuable bonding time between my son and I. We would sit alone in his room, giving funny names to common pieces (like the ‘toilet paper holders’) working through challenges, talking about other things in our lives, and cleaning up the little pieces together. Milestones were celebrated by my son joyously running out to show his mom the newest dinosaur we had built together.

We just finished the last dinosaur today. I don’t remember that $20 just three months later, but I’ll always remember the times we spent working together.

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