Frank Lloyd Wright’s Birthday

We celebrated this last year, just in a different fashion! Frank Lloyd Wright is a famous architect, you can read my post here from last year to get a brief history if you’d like. Again, my friend Kelly Jolly (an architect herself!)helped us celebrate in a fun, creative manner!

My “inspiration” came from an online lesson plan I found on the National Park Service website (click here for the link). It was called “Roadside Attractions” and essentially highlighted 7 very distinctly shaped buildings. We discussed the buildings with the children and then Kelly expanded on some facts on architects and their work (as well as brought along 2 gorgeous books of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work…I wish I had time to browse through them). Here are the fun “buildings” we discussed:

Kelly introduced them to some of the materials architects work with such as tracing paper, reusable stickers (to hold the paper and tracing paper in place), a brush (to keep their drawing surface clean) and a triangular scale ruler (which helps architects draw the buildings to scale).

It was cute, Kelly asked the boys, “Are buildings big or small?” They answered, “BIIIIIIIG!”. Exactly, that’s why a special ruler is required to draw them to scale, but smaller. We also discussed the different materials used in building. Frank Lloyd Wright was famous for using a variety of materials – glass, brick, wood, etc. A fun perk was being able to see the skyscrapers in downtown Sacramento after dropping off a friend at the airport. Cooper and I observed the different shapes of the building as well as the different building materials. Fun way to expand the “mini-lesson”. Here they are playing with architect tools. Take time to teach your kids…even 5-10 minutes! They’re like sponges, they do take in quite a bit. And have fun with it!