Toddler Theme: Cities

This week, we learned about cities and big buildings.  We live in an urban setting in a very tall building and I feel like we spend most of our time searching for nature & quiet.  But not this week...we celebrated all of the things that make cities great.  I planned a full-day field trip to visit dad at work in his big building downtown.  Driving a car would be too easy, though, so in the spirit of celebrating city life, we hopped aboard the light rail at the station by our apartment building.  I grabbed a map at the station and we studied it during our ride downtown.  One of the things that makes cities cool is the population density and the layout of the streets.  I let Mia identify shapes she saw on the map...lots of squares, rectangles, and a few triangles.  We got off at the big station -- Union Station -- and Mia was able to see other forms of public transportation like buses and high-speed rail.  Dad's office was a few blocks away still, so I decided it might be fun to hop on the free 16th Street bus from there and ride that a couple of blocks.  Mia agreed.  As if all of this wasn't exciting enough, dad's office offered all kinds of fun things to explore.  Like a jar of M&Ms, a graphing calculator with lots of buttons, and whole cup filled with yellow #2 pencils -- her favorites.  We took Dad out for lunch and then for a scoop of ice cream.  After he went back to work, we walked around the city for a bit and practiced our crosswalk safety.  Mia shouts out "Walking guy!" when it's safe to cross the street, but don't even think of trying to cross when it's "red hand."  That's a no no and will get you a Mia scolding as one stranger found out the hard way.  Ha!  Then it was back to the train station and onto the light rail towards home for naps.

We have one of those giant rolls of paper from IKEA that I always forget to use, but this week I had an idea.  We rolled out a long piece on the floor and grabbed the markers.  Drawing all kinds of big buildings, we made our own skyline.  It was probably fine like this but for some extra fun, I cut out the skyline and we hung it up in one of our windows.  As the sun set in the evening, it made a cool city silhouette.  Another day, we went up to the roof of our building and took pictures of the Denver skyline.  Mia has one of my old cameras and little by little, I've been showing her how to use it.  If you google "best place to view <your city> skyline," you should be able to come up with some cool places to try this with your kid.  Here in Denver, an awesome viewing spot is along the back of the Nature and Science Museum (walk straight through the Space exhibit and take the elevator up a few floors).

A summary of all Cities week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Rode some of the public transportation options downtown (bus, light rail), practiced street safety on a walk downtown

ART PROJECTS: Made a long city skyline banner with a roll of paper and markers, Took pictures of our city skyline from the roof

OUTINGS: Took lunch to dad at work downtown

SNACK: Bought an afternoon snack from a street cart vendor

BOOKS: Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems, This is New York by Miroslav Sasek

BIBLE STORY: Joshua and Jericho

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