“Who needs a flower?” asked the teacher raising the brightly colored plastic lego pieces. A chorus of “Me me me me me!”s erupted as four of the children sitting around the main table in the Make Room shot up their hands to claim one of the coveted pieces.

Separating himself from the commotion, one little boy crouches down on the floor near the wall and decides to play with the wall magnets instead. The square wall magnets, reminiscent of stained glass, are supposed to be used to make 2D patterns on the metal board mounted on the wall. The boy, however, entertained a different use. Each wall magnet was actually only magnetic along its edges, so the plates easily snapped together at right angles! With this discovery, he built a small cube. Then a bigger cube. Then an even bigger cube as the bucket of wall magnets began to empty. Finally, he stood up to admire his work — two colorful cubes, a small one stacked on top of a big one with some other plates randomly jutting out of the sides. He called the teacher over excitedly.

“Wow! This looks amazing!” applauded the teacher as he took a picture of it much to the pride of the little boy. “Tell me about what it is!”

“It’s a house with a big backyard! And there’s this big window over here and the front door is over here…” explained the boy beaming, pointing at different features incredibly proud of his handiwork.

It was interesting to see different types of personality in the room. While some of the children preferred the structure the teacher gave them, there was one of them that did not. Each child vied for the attention of the teacher in different ways. This event also revealed to me how children are great at finding different and unique ways to use things, and how their imaginations are incredible; they can turn two cubes into a complex structure with an entire backstory.