Thanks for letting me know what a MOC is. My kids predominantly built MOCs – they would usually build the set one time, and then fairly soon after they would disassemble it and add the bricks to the collection. Most of the time they built new creations out of whatever bricks and parts made sense. Our family values that type of creativity highly.
Even though they mostly enjoyed free-form building with LEGOs, we always kept the instructions. My reasoning for that was that the design plan and instructions represented a large part of the value and cost of LEGOs.
The beauty of LEGOs is that the original designs and instructions provide ideas and fuels for what’s possible to construct out of LEGOs, and how to approach problems of structure, functionality and aesthetics. At the same time basic LEGO concepts help provide a foundation for learning math and later, engineering concepts.
I’ll insert here my plug for <a href=”www.rose-hulman.edu”>Rose-Hulman</a> (my HTML may be rusty so I hope that turns out right). When my son was a high school junior all the cards and letters poured in from colleges. We still remember Rose’s – a postcard with LEGOs on it and the phrase “You always knew…” (He did end up going there and got an excellent engineering education.)
Like Josh I don’t know what my favorite thing is about LEGOs. In the recent project I loved the sorting, loved the building and really loved the documentation. But what I really need to do is some similar sorting, organizing and maybe documentation of some of the other kinds of “stuff” that I have in my house.