Iggy Peck, Architect, by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts, is one of our favorite books to read aloud at our Family Inventors’ Lab. We read it when we study Structures during our Engineering unit. It’s the right length for a read-aloud, great illustrations, silly story, and an inspiring story of a kid who likes to build and invent. I’ve created this simple matching activity to accompany it.

Roberts’ illustrations show Iggy re-creating famous buildings with various materials, such as the St. Louis arch with pancakes. My free printable matching activity (click here for the PDF) includes photos of 6 structures that children can find models of in the book.

More Resources to Accompany Iggy

The excellent book Picture-Perfect STEM Lessons, K 2: Using Children s Books to Inspire STEM Learning by Morgan and Ansberry is packed not just with recommendations for some truly excellent kids’ STEM books, it also includes detailed lesson plans to accompany the books including tips on how to read the book aloud, questions to ask to guide deeper discussion, hands-on projects to explore the ideas, art activities, and related media. They have a chapter on building structures which recommends Iggy Peck and Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building, which includes images of children building with everyday items (Legos, toilet paper rolls, wood blocks) and then pairs each with a famous architectural structure that reflects those buildings – such as the picture of children building with toothpicks and gumdrops paired with a photo of a geodesic dome.

Morgan and Ansberry recommend showing children the video “100 most famous buildings / structures of all time,” then asking children questions like: Do you recognize any of the buildings from the pictures in Dreaming Up, or Iggy Peck? Do all the buildings look the same? Why not? What are they made from? What were the different structures used for? Are they all beautiful?