We’re celebrating National STEAM Day by sharing our favorite children’s toys. These toys inspire creativity, spatial awareness and reasoning, problem solving, and above all, hours of fun! We’ve had these in our home for years now, and they continue to be played with year after year. Many of these toys can be combined and played with together. Just one idea is a Rube Goldberg Chain Reaction. See video below of ours from last year.
STEAM ACTIVITY TO TRY | Rube Goldberg Chain Reaction
Jeanette Winter’s picture book, The World is Not a Rectangle, brings Zaha’s celebrated designs to life. Winter beautifully illustrates, with her words and pictures, how the landscapes of Zaha’s childhood in Iraq - from grasses and dunes to stones and shells - influenced her architecture later in life.
Read moreMaya Lin (born Oct. 5, 1959 in Athens, Ohio) is perhaps best known for the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. and the children’s book Maya Lin: Artist-Architect of Light and Lines tells the inspirational story of just how that came to be.
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Dream Builder: The Story of Architect Philip Freelon, a children’s non-fiction picture book, is a biography of Philip Freelon. The beautiful writing of Kelly Starling Lyons with the bright and vibrant images by Laura Freeman take the reader on an inspiring ride of Freelon’s life from his youth to professional practice.
Born on March 26, 1953 in Philadelphia, Philip Freelon was raised in a creative and supportive family. His grandfather was the impressionist painter and educator Allan Randall Freelon and his father, a successful business man, attended the 1963 March on Washington. Philip was creative and a talented artist from an early age and later excelled in architecture school. Once establishing his own firm, he made the decision to design schools, museums, and libraries - “places that help people, that show everyday beauty, that celebrate heritage and fill hearts with joy.” In his professional career he did just that and went onto designing many museums and other civic spaces. He is best known for being the lead architect on the acclaimed Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. The museum was a dream, imagined back in 1915 following the Civil War, of a national memorial to honor Black soldiers and sailors. The dream grew into a museum to honor Black achievement, resilience, strength, and pride. A hundred years later, in 2016, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture became a reality.
We highly recommend getting a copy of Dream Builder for your home library to inspire the next generation of dreamers and designers!
Learn about the National Museum of African American History and Culture and plan a visit at https://nmaahc.si.edu/