LEGOLAND Malaysia Resort launches the LEGOLAND School Challenge 2024 at SK Bukit Damansara on Wednesday (2024 04 24).

This is the third year that LEGOLAND Malaysia Resort has held this competition and the first open to schools and students across Asia, including China, Korea and Japan, in addition to Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia.

This year’s LEGOLAND School Challenge theme is “World of Fantasy”. It aims to test teams — consisting of 4 to 8 students aged 7 to 17 and 2 teachers — in their ability to tell a story using dioramas built with LEGO elements. 

To further develop the competition, LEGOLAND Malaysia Resort, in partnership with the Education Ministry and the State Education Department, distributed LEGO sets — two LEGO Classics boxes with 2,500 elements total — to 50 schools nationwide. 

It also held a short LEGO building workshop at the launch event. It was attended by students and teachers from 45 schools nationwide. 

Registration for the LEGOLAND School Challenge 2024 is open until May 24. Register online on the LEGOLAND Malaysia Resort website. Teams must submit photos, a video, and a description of your LEGO creation by June 21 to be eligible to win prizes worth up to RM100,000.

Previous LEGOLAND School Challange

The first LEGOLAND School Challenge, with the theme “Pride of Your State”, was held in 2022 and saw 200 participants from all over Malaysia vying for prizes worth RM81,000.

In 2023, the LEGOLAND School Challenge had expanded to include participants from Asean countries. It received 370 entries with the theme “Cities of The Future” and has the prize pool go up to RM100,000.

My Thoughts

While it is commendable that they are trying to address two of the issues participants had in the competition in previous years — namely having to provide their own LEGO elements to participate and not knowing LEGO building techniques — it might not solve the issue. 

Having 2,500 LEGO elements to kickstart a build is useful. Still, because participants are not limited to the elements given, wealthier schools would have an advantage by having access to and the capacity to purchase more LEGO sets. 

Also, holding a short class during the launch for a small number of schools is not the most efficient way to help students and teachers who may not know how to work with LEGO elements before to have the skills to join the competition. A series of tutorial or masterclass videos for the participants could have been more useful