LEGO Party! for K-12

LEGO Party! is happening at the Fishtown Community Library this Wednesday, October 21, from 2:30 to 4:30 PM. It's open to K-12 students, so kids from kindergarten all the way through high school can hang out and build. There's no sign-up required—you just show up and get started.

The whole thing is built around the library's own LEGO collection, which they put out for the afternoon. There's no set prompt or specific project to follow, so kids just build whatever they're in the mood for. It's a good spot for a rainy afternoon or a mid-week break, and since it's open to such a wide age range, younger kids and older students end up in the same room, each doing their own thing. If you've got a kid who's always building something on the living room floor, this is a chance to let them do it with a whole library's worth of bricks instead of just the ones you've been stepping on.

The Fishtown Community Library serves Fishtown, East Kensington, and Olde Richmond, and this is one of the free programs they run for all ages. They do storytimes, English conversation groups, book clubs, and afterschool activities as part of LEAP, so this fits right into their regular schedule. The neighborhood gets its name from Charles Dickens, who reportedly called it Fishtown because of the fish sold in the open-air market on Girard Avenue. The current building opened on March 31, 1950, in a structure built in 1895 as a stable and later a horse-drawn fire station, which the city donated. It was renamed the Fishtown Community Branch in 1982 and renovated in 1989 and 1997.

LEGO Party! isn't a one-off, either. It's held every Wednesday during the school year from 2:30 to 4:30 PM, so if you can't make it this week, there's another one next Wednesday. It's free, and you can find the library at 1217 East Montgomery Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19125.