The creative and mental development of America's most gifted architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was molded by extremely intensive childhood creativity training, carried out by his mother's use of Friederich Froebel's building block curriculum. Her guidance was so effective that it changed mankind's perception of space, form, and architecture. Wright's own personal testimony and that of other experts attests to the effectiveness of this creativity. Further documentation is evidenced by his long physical and mental contact with the influence, and by the examination of his work showing the influence of these concepts. Implications for gifted education are the use of manipulable learning devices, an emphasis upon relatedness, and the role of aesthetics in promoting creative development.Froebel's Creativity Methods Before discussing how Wright gave architectural form to what he learned as a child, the Froebelian creativity education which Wright received must be first described.Froebel developed his educational materials and methods as vehicles to convey his deeply held philosophical beliefs in self-activity, well-ordered physical activity, connectedness, and creative expression (Bowen, 1901, p. 180; Froebel, 1911). Unique to the &dquo;kindergarten,&dquo; the educational institution which Froebel fathered in 1835, was his central emphasis not upon prereading readiness activities as in today's schools, but rather on the aesthetic and mathematical knowledge which could be gained through block play, which he called &dquo;Gifts used for art building&dquo; (Downs, 1978, p. 47-55; Froebel, 1895).Froebel's Gifts consisted mostly of sets of wooden blocks with different dimensions. The first gift, however, was a set of six soft, multicolored balls of woolen yarn, used to teach concepts of color, roundness, softness, up, down, around, come and go, and near and far. The second through sixth gifts were three-dimensional wooden blocks. The second gift consisted of three wooden forms-a cube, a cylinder, and a sphere -through which the child learned these forms and their differences. The third gift was a large wooden block, cut into eight equal cubes, from which the child could build chairs, steps, and other forms while he was learning concepts of horizontality and verticality and their interrelationship.The next three gifts, also wooden cubes, were cut into increasingly numerous and complex forms. The fourth gift was eight oblong blocks, the fifth was 39 whole, half, and quarter cubical blocks, and the sixth was 27 whole and partial oblong blocks. They were used for artistic construction, to teach order, exactness, and variations, and predispose the child's mind for his later study of geometry, algebra, and trigonometry. Froebel designed each gift with its own wooden box; to use the gift, the lidded box was turned upside down, then the lid was slipped out and the box lifted up, so that the child began with a perception of the whole. &dquo;It is well for him to receive his playthings in an orderly manner-not to have them tossed to him...