Build Your Own City

1 Ask your parents or grandparents to take you on a walking tour of stores and businesses in your community. Note the interesting store names and products or services in your town. Ask store owners how they became interested in their work. Listen carefully to their stories.

2 When you are back home, choose several recycled boxes to create a city block of buildings. Use these boxes as patterns to cut construction paper to cover them with Crayola® Scissors.

3 Use Crayola Colored Pencils and Crayola Gel Markers to add texture to your buildings' exterior walls. Draw horizontal lines to look like siding or curved designs to look like fancy moldings. For texture such as bricks, place your paper on top of flat textural materials (door mats, sandpaper, or netting, for example) and rub over the paper with the side of an unwrapped Crayola Crayon. Glue the building exteriors to the boxes with Crayola School Glue. Dry.

4 Add roofs using corrugated cardboard or construction paper. Carefully peel one layer of paper away from the corrugated cardboard to create a rippled roof. Add shingle colors with markers.

5 Create window and door trim by cutting rectangles and squares from colored construction paper. Glue them to your buildings. Cut smaller shapes of contrasting paper and glue on top for doors and windows. Outline windows, design window displays, and make curtains or faces peeking out the windows with markers.

6 Fold paper and write on it to create doors that open, store signs, steps, or awnings. Use Crayola Glitter Glue for sparkling neon signs and gleaming doorknobs. Hang paper strip signs from overhanging roofs. Glue on your additions. Dry.

7 Make as many stores and offices as you like-imagine a whole city block!