​Several years ago I stumbled upon some historical images that people recreated using Legos. I would share these with my students when we got to these periods in history, but thought recently, "this could be a good lesson for an entire class".

Before I get into this lesson idea here are some of my favorite images I compiled. Along with the Lego imag, I added the real image on the next slide plus an interesting link to follow up about the event or the image itself.

To be clear though, these are NOT my pictures. Here are links to the incredible galleries and people who made many of these:

• https://www.flickr.com/photos/balakov/sets/72157602602191858/
• ​https://thebyronicman.com/2011/12/17/history-lego-style/
• https://www.flickr.com/photos/erlich/albums/72157663304054683
• https://www.flickr.com/photos/mark-of-falworth/

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Plus check out this site called "Rare Historical Photos: And the story behind them…" I used this to do research on some of these photos and learned so much more from just digging around.. You can also follow them on Twitter here.

Now making these recreations isn't as simple as finding the right Legos. You have to think about lighting, backgrounds, and focus. For example, check out some of the setup required by making one of these images:

So, can I do something like this in my classroom?
Sure!
Here is what I would do.

1. First, you need to get a fair collection of Lego's. I've asked friends and other teachers if they have lego which are no longer used by their kids. They still hold their value pretty well, but you may find some friends whose kids are too old for them. 
2. Then think about when you would want to do this in your curriculum. I would recommend doing this as an end of the year or better yet a 20% project. This is where students have choice in projects that they work on through out the year during these 20% times you create in your day. You can learn more about this idea in Kevin Brookhauser's book: The 20 Time Project
3. I would collect the images for them to pick from. Having students search online often takes a long time and often brings back not the best results. Here is a post with tons of collections to look through
4. Have the students choose their images (this could be a good group project as well). I've done a lottery system where the first pick gets their choice. Second pick gets second choice and so on. I would provide more images that groups; for example have 50 images to pick from but you only have 25 groups. 
5. Show them how to create mini-studios like the one above. WIth cardboard and a camera (which can be a cell phone) they can make something similar. Side note: have them set up their camera so it does not move, i.e. a tripod or homemade stand
6. Once the photo has been shot use filters to try and recreate the original image. 
7. Lastly, (and this is the meat of this lesson) come up with the research part. They can present these orally or written but this should be where they demonstrate that they have LEARNED about this event or moment in time.

Good luck and please share back if you use this at all.

​After family movie night watching Apollo 13, I shared some of the real life images from the Apollo missions which NASA posted last year on their Flickr account. They uploaded over 14,000 images from all the Apollo missions. These are incredible resources that you can share with your students to really grasp what these magnitude of these missions. 

Much like any "vacation photos" you'll find often way too many scenic shots, but there are some pretty incredible ones too

For example, do you remember this scene in the movie? Its the one where the NASA team needs to teach the crew to create a modified carbon dioxide scrubber.