Today my classmate, Peyton, and I went to The Pink House which is a local non-profit that is a community resource center. They provide after school programs for children as well as food and hot meals to the community. I am working with The Pink House this semester through my Community 1:1 class to provide design skills for different things they may need. Part of what I am doing with them this semester is creating lesson plans that they can use in the future to teach the kids in the afternoon. This is the first lesson we have taught, and it was an introduction to architecture. This lesson was really fun to plan and covers what an architect does, the tools they use, and how they start designing. We wanted to really engage the kids, so we provided a packet that includes photos of famous buildings, famous architects, different types of drawings that architects use, and a coloring sheet of rainbow row to connect them with local architecture.
To begin we asked the kids “what is an architect?” and “what is a building that you really like and why?” We also went through the tools of an architect such as a scale, trace paper, tape measure, sketching pens and pencils, and explained a little about 3D design software. This led into talking about how an architect comes up with a design and what the process is for working out the design problems. We ended the session with asking them to be the architect and to draw their dream house. Below are the drawings:
The things they wanted to include in their dreamhouses were movie theaters, slides, swimming pools, cotton candy machines and the list goes on. All these features sound awesome!
