Do your children love to build towers, cities or playgrounds ? Do they play with legos, blocks, or doll houses ? Maia Tarassoff is an architect and mother of two children (age 6 and 9). She started Petit Architect in 2017 with the mission to make architecture more accessible to children and youth. Her goal to inspire and help them become more educated and involved within their cities.
She talks about why we need to introduce architecture to children and how we can easily do so.
Help you children to become aware of their built environment
Architecture and Design are all around us, in fact, everything that wasn’t made by mother nature was conceptualised, designed, drawn by … a person. That is a powerful concept that can open children’s minds to look at their surroundings with a new perspective!
Teach them to think outside the box
Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving. It’s asking the right questions, creating innovative solutions, testing, experimenting, prototyping… Once their is a problem, there is an opportunity to solve it. There is no right or wrong, no absolute answer, as it leads to experimenting and critical thinking. It’s very much like real life in that way.
Invite them to learn with their hands
Imaginary play and hands-on learning are so important in our digital times ! In fact, some children need to touch materials to learn best, this is the base of many alternative educations like Montessori, Steiner or Waldorf to name a few.
Cutting, gluing, painting, drawings…. are skills that matter and need not be forgotten as they are very useful in a design career, however, these skills are less and less taught in our regular schools.
Here are 10 ways to introduce your children to architecture and encourage design thinking:-
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For further information and to book online workshops do visit www.petitarchitect.com.
Maïa x