Kidizens: Teaching Life Lessons With LEGOS

Written by Katherine Hafner

Since its launch three and a half years ago, the Kidizens program has amassed millions of LEGOs in its inventory.

Why?

LEGOs are part of Kidizens’ mission to help children engage with community – both one they make themselves out of the small plastic bricks, and the real world.

Kidizens is an educational program that allows children, usually aged 8 to 12, to partake in building miniature LEGO cities that they then govern, modeling a real city.

Prerana Vaidya, the chief executive officer of Kidizens – which has locations in Belmont and Los Altos, formerly Palo Alto – said the company’s mission is to allow children to create and manage these cities made out of LEGOs, and in doing so find out about real concepts like financial management and city government.

“It’s a very life-like contextual framework, that allows kids to become engaged as stakeholders,” Vaidya said.

The Kidizens program offers after-school and homeschooling programs for kids, as well as summer camps.

Vaidya said on any given day walking into a Kidizens classroom, one can see about 10 “communities” underway – large tables covered with green baseboard LEGOs, on which the kids add to create their cities.

After the city is built, the next step is for the kids to assign themselves roles within the community, such as mayor, police officer or city councilmember. The kids use these roles to create city laws, amend them as needed, and make the community flourish.

Vaidya said the educators sometimes send challenges in the way of the city, like a “flood,” to have them recover and make decisions like whether or not to invest in flood insurance. The kids each have a certain amount of “money” they can spend at their own discretion as well.

She said parents have responded very positively in realizing how the Kidizens program can impact their child’s interest in civic engagement.  

“The idea is that it is a very dynamic environment because it is a guided discovery program,” Vaidya said. “Oftentimes what we talk about becomes an important dinner conversation.”

She added that she has seen many kids who were shy at first slowly begin to speak up for themselves in order to get what they want for their own “house” or community.

“I think they find it a very non-threatening environment,” she said.

Using LEGOs is a key to the program because they have a way of keeping the kids engaged, while learning the larger concepts, Vaidya added.

Although it launched only a few years ago, Kidizens itself is quickly becoming more and more a part of the community.

The company sometimes offers programs with local schools where its educators come in, bring LEGOs and have kids build their own flag and draft a constitution.

Last week, Kidizens held a three-day workshop at the Belmont Library, to celebrate its “LEGO week.”

Local Belmont parents have also been increasingly requesting birthday parties through Kidizens, she said.