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Children in hospital get visit from Lego master builder
Some young patients at a Dallas hospital got a break from their treatments so that they could play with Legos, and they had an expert to help them.
DALLAS - Some young patients at a Dallas hospital got a break from their treatments so that they could play with Legos, and they had an expert to help them.
Kids’ faces lit up as they saw Lego Santa on the roof of a Lego model of Medical City Children's Hospital.
The best part was all the Lego bricks they could need to add their own touch to the build.
"I made a red house, so it would shine," 6-year-old Jordan Tucker said.
Tucker missed his class Christmas party being at the hospital this week, but he did not miss the opportunity to make a new kind of memory.
"I have seen a lot of Legos, but not this much," Tucker said.
Thaddeus Bennett is a Lego master model builder for the Dallas Legoland Discovery Center.
LEGO Braille Bricks, meant to help children learn, now available to anyone
The bumps on each brick are arranged to correspond to the numbers and letters in the Braille system, with the printed version of the symbol or letter printed below the bumps.
"As a child, I didn’t know this was a job," Bennett said. "As an adult, this is definitely my dream job."
A job that required passing a lot of tests, like building a sphere, and a lot of building.
"Biggest thing I’ve ever built, 3D, would be 6.5-foot-tall Christmas tree that has 25,000 pieces," Bennett said. "Biggest 2D was mural at Pirates beach, area has over 100,000 pieces."
But it is a build like this where magic happens.
"Very humbled, happy to be here. Let the kids focus on something else," he added. "We all have that core imagination and silliness and wonderment that we have as a child. Being able to bring that out with everyone is truly a blessing."
Britney Bennett said her daughter, Kaylee, who just turned 13 years old while at the hospital, had a procedure Wednesday and hadn't been able to eat all day.
This helped her pass the time.
"I haven’t seen her smile all day, so this is amazing," she said. "It does make everything better."
"Some of our patients are here for a month or two, so doing these activities, like art therapy allows them to be creative," pediatric unit manager McKenzie Johnson said.
Bennett also took Lego sets up to kids who are not well enough to come to the lobby.