Our neighborhood

This is a great project which incorporates the beginnings of observational work for younger children. We incorporated it into a unit for first graders which was about our neighborhood and our community. It is great to take a 'field trip' walk outside if the weather is nice and have children look for buildings they're familiar with.
For this I prepped various sizes of corrugated cardboard with small slits in the bottom for stands. I also pre-cut 1" x 4" stands. Once the children chose their cardboards based on their memories ("Is the movie theatre tall? so you need a tall piece, right?") they went to town with paint. Once it was dry we added details with Sharpies and construction paper.
The best part was arranging the buildings in their proper places for a special visit by friends and family for the end of the school year! Funny, I didn't know the subway was on top of the coffee shop!