I was looking up early STEM activities and came across the ThinkBug Lab. I am interested in doing a similar activity at home, but I have searched high and low and there are next to no Duplo instruction booklets. The ones that are out there from the Lego website require a lot of specific pieces, but I am looking for something that uses the basic kind. We have a huge Duplo collection that was passed to me by my sister and added onto since our childhood, but I want my son to begin building from instructions as well as free play creating with them. He is desperate to use his older sisters Lego “Friends” kit but the pieces are really kind of too small for him still or I’d just buy him his own Lego set. I don’t want to invest in Duplo sets with instructions because 1) We have a massive collection already and 2) He will be outgrowing them very soon.
http://edventures.com/index.php?&lid=154
http://edventures.com/index.php?pid=12099 - The parent packs here are $120 which is a little steep for me. Is anyone here interested in creating an at home version of this we can share, similar to the flower shown on the home page? It would involved some creativity, a camera, and Duplos of course. I can probably come up with some, but many heads are better than 1. 
We can share them within the community, even as LR files or PP or whatever, with each picture showing a separate step.
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Here is a great place for you to start. We are huge lego fans and this is your go to place for all back lego kits with searchable database based on type. Much better than the lego site.
http://www.worldbricks.com/lego/lego-instructions/by-theme/basic.html
I did a search for basic which has all kinds of things. Or you can do a random search on the numbers and look for images of duplo buckets - they all came with basic instructions.
This is for Duplo - look for basic tubs or boxes and you should be able to come up with lots of plans.
http://www.worldbricks.com/lego/lego-instructions/by-theme/duplo.html
And I found this site: http://www.build-with-bricks.info/
Thank you Sonya! I spent some time today try to recreate from snippets I saw on the ThinkLab site and I started looking through your links and borrowed ideas from those too. Took me quite a while to take pictures of all of each step, but maybe I got through about 5-8 or so. Now I need to put them in LR or PP and see how my son likes them.
That’s such a creative idea - I think my 3-year-olds would really get into building things based on step-by-step instructions. I think I’ll be making some of these myself for our MegaBloks, too, by taking pictures of the steps. It could be a good learning activity to print each step on a separate card and then have the kids put the cards in order. Another idea is to use these around Christmas to do dramatic play of a Santa’s workshop, where the kids are elves and have to follow the instructions to build ‘toys’ out of their blocks.
I also found someone who used Lego Digital Designer to create step-by-step Duplo instructions: http://pyjamaschool.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/building-duplo-from-instructions/. Looks pretty neat!
You know, you can capture the screen shots and then you don’t have to take pictures! Love the card idea! Thanks -
TmT - We never used the building creator. I downloaded it this morning. It is pretty nifty piece of free software. You can put instruction mode and it shows you how to build the piece. Easy to take a screen shot of and put them in LR or PP or make cards. You can also go to the website and download creations made by others. Easy peasy. Plus you can pick the bricks that you have on hand.