Little Architect #03

Stair to your Dreams

Have you ever climbed up a tower? If you have, you probably remember the steep and narrow stairs to the top of the tower that made you run out of your breath. Then, when you reached the observation deck, a beautiful panorama took your breath away… Stairs are difficult to climb at times but can be so rewarding when they lead you to a wonderful destination.

The “stairs to dream” activity inspires your child to envision their future dreams and to identify the key milestones to reach them. Writing down goals and dreams on paper is a powerful way to increase the chances of realising them. A Harvard Business Study found, in a study of the graduates of their MBA course, the 3% who had written down their goals, realised their goals and, in the ten years after graduation, achieved financial success ten times the value of the other 97% put together.

The “stairs to dream” encourages your child to remember their dreams in a playful way and helps them build a goal-setting skill.

Impossible Stairs

You might think that stairs always bring you to a destination, but this not always the case. Have you ever heard of the “impossible stairs”? These are stairs one could climb forever and never get any higher. Created by the Dutch artist M C Escher and English mathematician R. Penrose, these stairs confound our expectations.

At a glance, they look like they make sense – each flight is coherent in itself. But once put together, they create an impossible situation. It’s an optical illusion made through some clever geometrical manipulation. A few people have tried to build them in the real world. . . Do you think this is possible?

Let your child discover and wonder about the ‘impossible stairs’ using our fun sheet. Perhaps they will be inspired to design some impossible stairs of their own, in which case we would love to see them!

What you need

A pencil or a pen, some colour pencils or colour pen
A print of the fun sheets below

Fun Sheets

What dream is waiting for your child at the top of the stairs?
Did you try to design your 'impossible stairs'?

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