It turns out Legos aren't just toys for kids (or the worst nightmares for barefoot parents ). In Alycia Zimmerman's classroom , they are important tools for learning.

Zimmerman, who teaches third grade at Chelsea Prep in New York, uses Legos to help her students learn math. "In the classroom, the tiny bricks are now my favorite possibility-packed math manipulative!" she wrote in a blog for Scholastic in 2013 .

Her use of the classic toy recently picked up speed, thanks to Bored Panda. On Dec. 8, the site shared Zimmerman's ideas in a post on Facebook that has been liked more than 40,000 times in two days.