Build a Paper City with Free Printables

My daughter’s school has project-based finals instead of tests in the spring, and in her geometry class last year the students constructed a scale model of a town complete with three-dimensional buildings.

Of course building a paper town doesn’t have to include a geometry lesson (they also calculated the volume of their buildings) but it is a fun way to get kids to express their creativity by decorating the buildings and talking about the things they would want to include in their own town.

Putting buildings together is a test of fine-motor skills, and if kids are working on a town together they’ll need to negotiate what goes where and why.

Get started with the house printables from Kids Activities Blog. They’ve got a “plain” roof house and a “fancy” roof house to choose from. Just print, color, cut out and assemble.

You might want more than just houses in your little town, though, so I went hunting for some more printable templates you can use to make different kinds of buildings.

Brother has printable skyscrapers, cars, people, trees and lights (shown above) that are meant to be printed in color buy you can do them in black and white so kids can color them in if you want.

Printablee has another colorized set of paper buildings including different kinds of houses and something that maybe looks like a church or school.

If you’re willing and bale to pay for printables to use in your paper town, there are lots of great ones available on Etsy. Ludlow Prints has a collection with a school, grocery store, bakery and other buildings, while Paper Fun By Yumi includes things like a hospital, fire department and police station (essential if you’ve done a community helpers unit!).

Tiger Bee Learning has a printable set with 20 different buildings, including a bank, library, museum and zoo to name a few, as well as a blank template for kids to design their own buildings. Once you have the basics of making a piece of paper into a 3D building down, kids are sure to want to make their own buildings to add to the town.

Older kids can also write about why they picked the buildings they did, and littler kids will have fun building their town over and over again.

[Photo: Brother]

Hispanic Heritage Month runs from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 each year (because it celebrates the time period when several countries gained their independence) and it’s a great time to bring in some Hispanic inspired crafts and foods. For an overview on the celebration, the difference between Hispanic and Latino and the importance of the holiday, as well as a look at Latino art and famous Latinos and Latinas, check out this post and related information from the National Museum of the American Latino.

Spanish Playground has a great collection of craft ideas that you can do in Spanish class or with kids in any class or at home. It includes things like weaving, making mola (folk art from Panama; learn more at Kid World Citizen), doing an artist study of a Hispanic artist and more.

Crafty Chica has a great collection of crafts, coloring pages and printables for celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with kids. I love this coloring page inspired by Amante bark painting, but there are also folk art stamps, corn husk dolls, tile painting ideas and more.

Papel picado is a classic folk art from Mexico that will feel familiar if you’ve ever made a paper snowflake. Learn how to make them from tissue paper with this video from Hispanic Society Museum and Library.

Learn more about Hispanic Heritage Month, get recipes and crafts from PBS Kids. I love this Peruvian siku flute, which can be made with old markers or paper straws.

While not exactly a craft, playing loteria (a Spanish language bingo game) is a fun thing to do with a group of kids. Free Kids Crafts has printable bingo cards with basic Spanish vocabulary and images for people who don’t already know these words.

And if you need a little snack when you’re done crafting, try these no bake mini tres leches cakes from Inspired by Family. They’re made with purchased pound cake so they’re pretty fast and easy.

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