My 5 year-old daughter is getting into Legos. I was initially psyched, but now I’m not so sure. From my limited experience, the set comes with very prescriptive instructions for how to build what’s pictured. My daughter follows them, with frustration at times, and is very product-focused. Sure, she learns fine motor skills and following directions, but where is the creativity? Where is the joy in the process? The most beautiful part, as her mom, is when the process is finished, she then plays creatively with the scene, crafting stories with the figurines. As a metaphor for teaching, I think that if we focus on the product (the poster or the paper or graduate school admissions or certain content on an exam), the process can become prescriptive, and we lose a lot of learning opportunities and student engagement along the way. I’m really curious what my daughter would have built given the pieces and no instructions.