City Collage

What You Need:

• White watercolor paper, 8.5" x 11"
• Variety of colored construction paper
• Scissors
• Glue Stick
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Oil pastels, color pencils, or crayons

What You Do:

1. Look at tons of photos on the Internet of buildings in cities from around the world with your child. Have her tell you all the shapes she sees and if the buildings are standing alone or overlapping other buildings. Also show examples of how buildings can be smaller in the distance and how some buildings are so big, that you only see parts of them hidden behind other architecture. Different architectural cities could be: Denver, Frankfurt, Seattle or Dubais.
2. Have her draw out different sizes of rectangles and squares on the colored papers using a ruler and then cut them out. These will be the basis of all buildings.
3. Using a ruler or freehand, she can cut out a variety of shapes that will fit on top of the buildings such as domes, triangles, arches and circles. These should also be cut out.
4. She can now lay all the shapes out on the white paper figuring out how she will plan her city. Encourage her to overlap buildings and alter the shapes of the rooftops. The buildings should span the entire width of the paper.
5. With everything in place, she can now carefully glue all the structures in their places.
6. Once glued, she can draw in the sky, windows and any other details she would like on the buildings.
7. Hang up her finished city skyline.

Encourage her to create different cities or fantasy-scapes, including ones that may exist underwater or in outer space!