Project Architecture for kids is a
place where art and architecture are experienced by children aged 4
to 12 years as part of their playful learning experiences. It
involves a series of hands-on projects where they learn the language
of architecture and discover for themselves their relationship with
the environment. In doing so, they learn to perceive and respect
their physical environment.
This project is conceived by Lim Siew
Yee. Siew Yee first got in touch with teaching art to young children
while she was practising as an architect. The interest in teaching
young children took off and led her into teaching full time as an
early childhood educator. As it is in the pursuit of architecture, it
is to her belief that education is very much about the process of
learning rather than the learnt product. Teaching children is a form
of “architecture” as it involves all the senses and builds on
previous experiences to form new learning grounds. At the same time,
architecture which forms such an intricate part of our everyday
experiences is an apt teaching approach for providing children with
concrete and meaningful experiences.
Siew Yee attained both her
undergraduate and masters degree in Architecture from Mcgill
University in Montreal, Canada and also has a recognised Diploma
in Early Childhood Care and Education – Teaching (DECCE-T) from
Asian International College, Singapore.
Vision
Project Architecture for kids hopes to
promote architecture education amongst children and to spark an
interest in architecture in children. We hope to have children to be
more appreciative of their environment and the tectonics of things
around. Rather than just playing with a toy, we hope they can
question how the toy is made and perhaps be inspired to explore
further or rebuild a toy of their own. Rather than going all the way
to a theme park to find fun, we hope that they can find simple joy as they indulge in their
self-discoveries when they attempt to manipulate their everyday environment to
make things, inventing their own play along the way.
Philosophy
We, at Project Architecture for kids,
believe in designing purposeful play for children to encourage
children to use their inborn imagination and spontaneity to
experience the physical world. While we make use of various
techniques and mediums to engage them in their learning, we will like
to focus on the three dimensional aspects to allow them to look into
the depths of the architectural world.
As the children become involved in
exploring architecture through the process of "learning by doing", they are in reality coming into contact with
the many different disciplines such as history, culture, physics,
math and art.
