Louis Sullivan, the Father of the Modern Skyscraper, was born on Sept 3, 1856 in Massachusetts. We had a wonderful discussion of him at this morning's birthday. It led to all kinds of interesting things: the science of steel and load-bearing walls and the Chicago Fire of 1871, and Form Follows Function. The discussion culminated in the girls (led by Ella) turning over their daily printed schedules and drawing their ideal floor plan for a house, based on the idea of form following function.
This is what home schooling was meant to be.
And, we got in some great snuggles this morning before we started the day.
I live for days like this.
3 comments:
Louis Sullivan has always been someone I've wanted to learn more about. Thanks for the reminder and the information.
Cool homeschool tie-in, too!
I had this thought reading your blog a month or two ago, and this just reminded me of it.
You should put together a book or some other resource of worthy "Birthdays of the Week" and sell it. (Or do you do "B-day of the Day"?)
I would love to be able to bring this type of thing up with my kids, but I just don't have the time or inclination to do the research. But based on all the references to this tradition/habit/activity that you have with your kids, you pick some really great people to highlight and celebrate.
So, if you're willing to spend the countless hours putting it together, you have one guaranteed customer. That's enough, right?
Here's a hint to make it totally easy: Wikipedia! (Which was started by an Objectivist, btw.)
Just go to today's page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_8
or substitute in whatever date it is today, the full name of the month-underscore-day, and you'll get a great list of events that happened "today," and then births below it. The list grows all the time, although anywhere past the 1970s you'll pretty much find just "Iranian cricketer" and the like as the profession. So not everyone on that list is famous, much less being celebrated that day.
Then you scan the info, and take 5 minutes at the breakfast table with the kids to discuss the birthday of that day. Time crunch solved.
Some days are just plain duds, or only have evil people, and in those cases, we substitute in people who don't have an official birthday, like Aristotle.
I do have a spreadsheet of dates and birthdays, but it's not completely filled in.
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