Turn large toddler legos that your kids have outgrown into a new educational word play game. Gather some blank adhesive labels (large address labels cut to fit work best) and apply them to the side of the legos. Next, write basic sight words and beginning vocabulary words onto each block.

For example, create several legos with words such as: the, and, a, I, with, to, from, and so on. Then create several with basic verbs such as: chase, fight, run, jump, eat, drink, hit, bite, stomp, etc. Finally, make several with basic nouns: Dog, cat, house, apples, car, pen, hat, barn, sun, shirt, and so on. It might help to color code each category; yellow for verbs, blue for nouns, green for adjectives, etc.

Mix the legos up, and then pass them out to each player just like you might a stack of cards, until all the legos are doled out. There are several variations to what comes next, depending on the reading level of your children:

Variation 1 for emergent readers

If your kids are only emergent readers who still need help, just have them build with the legos, with all the word labels facing the same way. They’ll have fun simply by having a teacher come to read their silly, nonsensical sentences.

Variation 2 for children with basic reading skills

Play the game by having kids try to build their legos into word pyramids (that read from the top going down left to right on the pyramid), or sentence walls (so that each sentence is on one level, with different sentences on top of each other). As children complete their work, have them go back and forth taking turns reading each other their creations, trying to top one another with either the coolest sentence or the most words in a legible order.

Variation 3 for competent readers

Set a time limit, such as 5 minutes, and have kids race to see how many different sentences they can come up with in that time; building them, tearing them apart, then building another. Or have them race to try and use the most of their legos in one big long legible sentence or paragraph and then build it into a pyramid before their classmates do.