LEGO exhibitions and events for museums

An annual celebration of books and literature, World Book Day encourages people to dress up as their favourite book characters.

Why not introduce a little bit of LEGO fun in to World Book Day? A great way to add another element of fun to your school day, library schedule or museum attractions, try one of our LEGO workshop suggestions for World Book Day building activities. LEGO bricks are a great medium to get children talking about their favourite books, recreating scenes and characters in 3D!

Here are Bricks McGee’s favourite ideas for World Book Day activities with LEGO bricks.

Build your own story in LEGO bricks

Ask participants to develop their own story; a short story may work best here. Once they’ve had time to develop their ideas, provide LEGO bricks and figures and allow them to build their stories.

To extend or vary the activity, try asking participants to draw and plan their story first, perhaps in comic book format. This adds a layer of planning and thought to the process, as well as allowing participants to find relatable content from other publications to use as inspiration.

What you need to know

  • You’ll need: your brains, and a box of LEGO bricks
  • Suggested timeframe: 60 minutes

Suggested workshop format

  • 0 – 5 minutes: Introduction – explain the activity.
  • 5 – 15 minutes – get participants to develop their story (perhaps with a story-board, drawn on paper!)
  • 15 – 45 minutes – time to build! Using the LEGO bricks provided, ask participants to build their story (or a segment of it).
  • 45 -60 minutes: encourage participants to explain the stories they’ve developed with each other, using the models to illustrate key plot points and characters.

Build your favourite book character

If you’ve been studying a book as a group within school or a library, why not organise in to teams, with each team building a character from the book with LEGO bricks?

What you need to know

  • You’ll need: your brains, and a box of LEGO bricks
  • Suggested timeframe: 30 – 60 minutes

Suggested workshop format

  • 0 – 5 minutes: Introduction – explain the activity.
  • 5 – 25 / 5 – 55 minutes: ask participants to explain what they’ve been building.

Build a LEGO book cover

Ask participants to name their favourite book, and write their idea on a piece of paper, or Post-It note.

This workshop activity can then work in two ways:

  1. Ask builders to create their own favourite book cover with the LEGO provided.
  2. Ask builders to swap their favourite book title with another person, and have them build their model based on this, rather than their own favourite book title. This can be a great way to introduce participants to new literature!

Many book covers are challenging to recreate in LEGO bricks, particularly in a short timeframe, so encourage simplification and abstraction of any complex book covers; the aim of the activity is to create a recognisable interpretation of the book cover with LEGO bricks, rather than replicating it exactly!

For older groups, or for a longer/more challenging workshop activity, ask participants to build a scene from their chosen book inside the covers!

What you need to know

  • You’ll need: your brains, and a box of LEGO bricks
  • Suggested timeframe: 30 – 60 minutes

Suggested workshop format

  • 0 – 5 minutes: Introduction – explain the activity.
  • 5 – 55 minutes: allow participants to build. To mix up the workshop, why not ask participants to swap models with another builder half way through the building time to test their communication skills and creativity?

Need some help with a WBD workshop?

We’re always happy to run these workshops for you, whether you work for a library, museum or other school: please review our workshops with LEGO bricks page (or schools workshop page) for more information.

Of course, if you’re looking for hireof LEGO bricks to help you facilitate these workshops yourself, we can help with that too!