lego: Play Folklore

Young and old Romanians, they all agree that each one should be able to recognize the Horezu pottery, to know the story of the “Goat with three kids”, and, most importantly, to learn about the beautiful motifs of the Romanian traditional costumes, one of the nation’s heritages. But how do you teach kids nowadays that tradition is something cool? Baneasa Shopping City, Romania’s prime shopping mall, was determined to give back to the local community in a playful way. As such, for the second edition of their educational program, the Imagination Expo, they invited kids to rediscover Romanian folklore in a different way, by using LEGO® bricks. Because, oh well…playing is the best way to learn, isn’t it? A new type of learning material wrapped as a daring and playful project, LEGO® ETHNICS is a set of six kits, each one comprised out of more than 2000 LEGO® bricks and the necessary instructions to build a representative Romanian traditional costume for one of six historical provinces of Romania: Bucovina, Moldavia, Muntenia, Oltenia, Transylvania and Banat. The kits started their story in Romania, were build by tens of children and then exhibited in Baneasa Shopping City and The Romanian Peasant’s Club and left afterwards to bring joy to the little Romanians abroad, who needed them the most in order to build their sense of belonging. Everywhere LEGO® ETHNICS went, it brought along Romanian traditions, dances, customs, songs and a great deal of happiness amongst the little ones, who received them with open arms and a lot of smiles. While kids were busy “sewing” the costumes one brick at a time, they also found out about the interesting stories behind the costumes and kept a beautiful memory as a gift: the costumes that they build, which were offered as donations to their schools.