I recently completed another fantastic edition of Telehealth and Kids with PESI. If you didn’t get to view it live, you can purchase the recording of my original presentation on their website.
As I was presenting my toolbox of kid-friendly telehealth activities, someone asked if I knew of a way to play with Legos online. I had to say that unfortunately, that was not something I have found at this point, but another participant stepped up and shared Mecabricks with us all! The website is full of virtual Lego sets that you can put together using a web browser.
Although the site advertises Lego sets, you can customize the color and amount of each brick, and you can make them larger or smaller if you so desire. You can export your work in progress if you run out of time and finish in another session, which is especially cool because, in my office, kids would want to save their work for the next session, and this was not always an option with all the other kids who wanted to play with Legos in between appointments.
I use this with clients by going to the Megabricks home page and sharing my screen with my client. They indicate which model they want me to open, and I grant them screen control to choose what bricks they want and completely control the build. The site uses a grid to help with brick placement, which helps kids navigate. Some get frustrated when they are first figuring out the system, but as always, “building frustration tolerance” is an intervention that fits into a lot of different treatment goals!
Legos give so much room for creativity, and this virtual Lego set means that clients can have infinite blocks in whatever color they need! And without any risk of stepping on a Lego or finding random pieces around my office.