If your kids love to build and are looking for a new challenge, they’re going to love building a paper city!
This is a great way to not only keep your child busy, but also give them a creative outlet to create and play. Not to mention it is a lot of fun, and the best part is….it is educational! They won’t even know they’re learning.
Foster + Partners, a British architecture studio, is releasing building templates online, complete with instructions on how to fold and glue each building and structure.
This is a fabulous STEAM activity for kids of all ages, as it combines so many different skills, all while being fun.
Using templates from the architecture studio, kids can color and put together a skyscraper made out of paper. They can cut out and build paper houses.
Architecture For Kids
Kids can even learn how to draw trees like architects do! Foster + Partners members designed the paper city templates to entertain and educate kids. From the looks of it, they plan to continue to release more templates.
My six-year-old loved cutting out some of the bigger shapes, coloring in parts of the building, and learning how to fold the paper into boxes.
Little does she realize how much she’s learning as she creates her own paper city! After all, this activity is wonderful for encouraging not only creativity and art, but design and engineering skills too.
Architecture For Kids Projects
As kids create and build more and more buildings and houses, they can start to design an entire city. In other words, this paper city activity may keep your kiddos busy and entertained for hours.
They’ll have a blast not only putting together the buildings, but deciding how to organize their paper city too.
As Katy Harris, a senior partner at Foster + Partners, told Dezeen:
“The main aim has been to get them to ask questions about their surroundings and start thinking about their built environment. For instance, the photo story activity teaches children about scale and prompts them to think differently about space and buildings.”
DIY Paper Buildings For Kids Ages 2-12
While Foster + Partners says they designed the templates and activities with kids age 2 to 12 years old in mind, they’re finding that kids of all ages (and yes, parents too) are having a blast making their own paper city.
People from all over the world are emailing their creations directly with Foster + Partners as well as sharing them through social media using the hashtag #architecturefromhome.
For younger kids not yet ready to fold and assemble boxes, consider creating a pretend city with them using paper bags instead.
Encourage your aspiring architects and learn all about what truly makes a building. Written and illustrated by members of the studio, here is something to read and sing-along, for our younger readers. #architecturefromhome #learningforchildren pic.twitter.com/ox1xSLrNzj
— Foster + Partners (@FosterPartners) April 29, 2020
Just in case you want something else to further encourage your budding architects and artists even more, Foster + Partners also released a children’s book, all about “what makes a building.”
More Fun Educational Crafts and STEM Activities:
Make a paper city and then enjoy some fun pretend play.
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You can get over 3,000 printable STEM activity pages for your kids!
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