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While studying World War II, my kids built some LEGO tanks! They had such a fun time looking at pictures of tanks and trying to get the correct shape. The tops of the tanks swivel, as you can see in the YouTube demonstration below. The green tank has a hatch where soldiers can enter the tank. If you have Robotic LEGOs, you can use the track for the bottom of the tank. If all you have is regular LEGOs, you can make a track like the green tank, using black LEGOs.
We are using All American History, Volume II this year for our American History studies. We also read The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom to further understand the Holocaust of World War II.
Besides LEGO tanks, you can also make other LEGO scenes from World War II. During the Blitzkrieg in London, the German planes dropped bombs on the city, demolishing the entire city and leaving it in ruins. As you can see in the YouTube video, the airplanes are 3-dimensional, coming out from the scene, dropping their bombs behind them. The white buildings have black smoke rising from them.
My son decided to make a LEGO atomic mushroom cloud out of white LEGO bricks. Just look at a photo of an atomic explosion, and you will see how to construct the mushroom cloud. There is a larger mushroom top and a smaller mushroom top about half-way down, tapering sort of like stair steps.
My daughter made a concentration camp out of a LEGO base that was gray. There was a gas chamber in one corner. A LEGO man is beating a couple of Jews, and two more men are shooting two other prisoners.
Here is the video demonstration where I show you our World War II LEGO creations:
Making scenes out of LEGO bricks will help kids to understand World War II while creating from their imaginations. The LEGO tanks were especially fun to make!
