Summer vacations (which it is what we in the States are in middle of now) are a time that many parents spend time with their children exploring the cities they live near or are visiting.

This activity, city landscape art, is a great way to remember some of what they’ve seen on their trip to the big city.

When I did this activity in school with my students I only had pictures for them to refer to and not actual experiences but, I think both are helpful.

I think that children need lots of stimuli to encourage creativity and many pictures are a great way to do so since you are not limiting them to one idea, just allowing them to pick and choose. Of course, if you can give them colored pictures that is much nicer.

I started out this landscape activity as I do with all landscape activities. I have them decide where they will divide their papers with a horizon line. The horizon line divides where the sky and ground will be and they decide how much sky and how much ground they want by drawing a line across their papers.

In this case, I then showed them a number of different media that they could use to create their skies.

I then took all these lovely gray papers I bought in a local craft store

and cut them into various sized rectangles. I also added black. (Gray and black are to give a city illusion to the buildings)

I then had them place the rectangles they chose on their papers on the bottom which is the ground part.Some added windows and other building parts.

They then chose how they wanted to create their skies.

After they did their skies they finished gluing all the rest of their pieces and were allowed to add anything else they thought was in a city.

We had made a whole list of things like taxis and people and dogs that belong in a city. They drew and cut out some of the extra objects they made from white paper.

If you are doing this after a trip its a great way to discuss what they saw and what they would like to add to their artwork based on what they saw on  their own trips.(or knowledge of what’s in a city)

We then added a coat of mod podge over their landscapes so that the pictures  would be more durable and shiny.