lego storage.... I think I came up with a solution!

My wonderfully, intricate 4 year old will play with those teeny tiny legos for hours on end. I love this about him, but all those pieces drive me crazy! A few months ago we moved his "train table" to his room so he could have a place to build where a little master of disaster couldn't destroy his creations. This was the first step of my lego solution, but it still drove me crazy that he constantly had ALL his legos dumped all over his table! I was bound and determined to come up with some sort of storage for these little building bricks that would be easy for him to manage.

With a quick run down the tub aisle at Target, I assessed all my options and found some plastic drawer organizers for $4.99 a piece that totally are working. I came home and cut out a piece of construction paper in each of the lego colors to fit each section of the container. It looked like this when I was done:

Then I headed upstairs with my new creations and he and I sorted. This is a great learning activity and he helped decide what we should do with some of the miscellaneous pieces. It took us a while to sort them all but I am hoping that will make an impression on him that if he dumps them we have to start all over again. I emphasized emphatically how much work it would be to have to do it all over again, so maybe he got the idea!

Here is what our finished project looked like:

We had a few empty sections so we used one for all the little lego guys and their accessories, one of the big sections for things he has built and one of the little clear sections for "clear" pieces. Target did have some similar trays that were made up of just the three longer sections that would store more pieces. I have a feeling after his birthday this year we may have to invest in one or two of those since all the boy wants is legos! But so far this system is working well for us. I think he really likes it because it makes it much easier to find the perfect piece when he is busy building!