When you build a house or castle out of Lego, you can’t help but think how cool it would be to live in a life-size building like that. Well, the California Legoland has done it with their Lego Hotel. The building itself isn’t totally made out of Legos, but it’s very Lego-y. There are about 3,400 different sculptures in the hotel, using 3 million Lego pieces in total. But the nice thing about your regular home is no one can take it apart while you eat dinner.
Wee ones: If there are Pirate, Kingdom, and Adventure rooms, and you’ve stayed in a Pirate room and an Adventure room, how many room types do you have left to try?
Little kids: If your room’s statue has 6 pieces for its nose and you stick on 2 more pieces, how many nose pieces are there now? Bonus: The whole wall behind the front desk has a Where’s Waldo minifigure. If you’re staring at 20 minifigures and one of them is Waldo, how many of them aren’t Waldo?
Big kids: If you’ve stayed in 6 rooms at Legoland and each had 8 statues, how many statues have you gotten to see? Bonus: How do you “spell” 3 million in numbers?
Answers:
Wee ones: 1 more room type – the Kingdom style room.
Little kids: 8 nose pieces. Bonus: 19 minifigures.
Big kids: 48 statues. Bonus: 3,000,000.
Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking before she could walk, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.