Review : LEGO Education 45400 BricQ Motion Prime

Today we quickly tour a product a little different from those I usually talk about on the site: the set Lego education 45400 BricQ Motion Prime, a box of 564 pieces which promises to introduce the youngest to a few simple physical and mechanical principles.

This set is aimed at an audience of college students between sixth and fourth and it requires a solid educational content to cover the few models to build. Without context, most of these somewhat crude constructions are irrelevant and they are only there to serve the lessons imagined by LEGO.

No motors, electronic hub or sensors in this box centered on the "Sports science", this is about learning the principles of movement, forces, angles and interactions using a simple basic assortment of bricks, beams, gears, weights and accessories tires.

LEGO makes no secret of it, this product and the other set from the same range intended for CM2 students (45401 Brick Motion Essential) are a little less ambitious educational tools than the other references in the LEGO Education universe. They are tailor-made to try to fit into the budget of the less fortunate school or association structures and to invest in schools in developing countries. The approach is not completely disinterested, education is here an entry point to the LEGO universe and the young students will perhaps one day become customers of the brand they have known on the benches of the school.

The and 45400 BricQ Motion Prime is delivered in the usual stackable blue box inside which the manufacturer has planned everything to facilitate the organization of the parts and the storage of the kit between two sessions. Two locker bins are provided, with a set of stickers to identify the different storage spaces and sort the pieces by color. The largest items are to be stored in the bottom of the crate, under the two compartments.

The manufacturer also provides an instruction booklet in paper format that allows you to assemble several of the models that serve as a support for the courses that will however have to be downloaded from the official website. I am not a teacher, but it seems to me that these lessons are rather well designed, they should in principle allow someone who has never run an educational workshop using products from the LEGO Education range of s. 'get out of it and I was able to verify that this is the case.

I tried to get my 12 year old son (5th) into the concept by pretending I was presenting him with one of the lessons offered by LEGO. I was able to keep his attention long enough to get to the end of the lesson and the construction phase was not unrelated to this sudden interest in principles that seemed to him much less interesting on the benches of the college. On arrival, we especially have the impression that the LEGO context ultimately only serves to interest the student who will more easily accept to assimilate a notion via a construction toy.

Preparation of the workshops, contextualization of the experiments that will be carried out, detailed progression of the different stages of the course, everything is scripted down to the smallest detail so that these lessons, lasting an estimated 30 to 90 minutes, take place as LEGO has conceived. The students also have content to download with cards that allow them to keep track of the various exercises performed.

Eight lessons are offered, it will be necessary to show imagination to invent others making good use of the pieces available to the pupils and it will then be possible to illustrate other themes or principles using the contents of the box. In any case, we should not rely too much on LEGO to flesh out the educational envelope of the product over time.

On the inventory side, we note the presence of Technic 11x19 panels and a few frames en Medium Azure, a pump and a pneumatic cylinder accompanied by the pipes essential to the operation of the circuit, a valve that is currently found in the set 42128 Heavy-duty Tow Truck, two shock absorbers, two weighted 2x6 bricks which had not been used by LEGO since 2016 and which are therefore back, four wheels and three graduated flexible plastic elements that allow you to work on angles. The two 52mm diameter yellow balls visible in the photos are official LEGO items that are only available in sets from the Education range.

Four minifigs embodying the pilots of the various construction machines or the characters to be performed on the ski slope are provided. They come with a handful of accessories that are just there to add a little fun to the experiences and personalize the different figures. The torsos and heads of the different minifigs are all from the LEGO CITY range, nothing exclusive or new on this side.
LEGO also provides a kit of additional parts which will supplement the inventory in the event that certain items end up lost under a desk.

The different models to build do not bother with aesthetic considerations, they go straight to the point and do not require an in-depth knowledge of the LEGO universe to decipher the instructions and put the pieces together.
You will have to dismantle one model to assemble the next one and there are only two tanks that can be built simultaneously, the other experiments sharing elements in common.

In summary, this product has a few arguments to make with a rather well-designed educational content which will, for example, be within the reach of parents who want to integrate a playful dimension into certain learning sessions at home and a public price which makes it widely available. more accessible than the products in the SPIKE Prime range with their Smart Hub, sensors and motors.

The real life of the product ultimately depends only on the skills of the person who uses it to present some concepts to his students, it will be necessary to try to go beyond the content offered by the manufacturer who guarantees only a small ten hours of lessons to really amortize the investment made. Those who judge the interest of a LEGO product only via the price / piece martingale can go their way, this product is obviously not just a simple box containing pieces of plastic to be assembled together.

We can consider that a box per team of two or possibly three students is necessary so that the different experiments can be carried out by all the participants without frustration, and at 120 € per kit, equipping a class of about thirty children will require therefore a substantial budget. Most of the concepts studied and experiences offered can also be approached with less expensive tools and for many teachers or heads of associations with limited budgets, the calculation will be quickly done.

Note: The set presented here, provided by Robot Advance, is as usual involved. Deadline fixed at August 18, 2021 next at 23pm. For newcomers, know that you just need to post a comment to participate in the draw.