City At Night Chalk Composition Third Grade

This project is based on a picture I saw on Pinterest of a chalk picture of a city at night with glowing electrical lights. I wanted a change from chalk and glue fish project I usually do so we tried this one! 
First, we looked at cityscapes on our large projection screen and discussed how the different shapes of the buildings made it look like a city.  We used 12" x 4" donated tag board and rulers to make a stencil of a city with 4 to 6 different roofs or shapes.

 

Using brightly colored chalk pastels, students traced their stencil at the TOP of a 12" x 16 " piece of black construction paper.  

 

After tracing, 3rd graders used a towel wrapped finger to spread chalk up from edge of stencil making the "glowing" lights above the building.

 

New colors were chosen and stencil was moved down and flipped over so that different building shapes would be in front of the previous row. I also let them trade stencils once with a neighbor to get a completely different row of shapes.

Last step was to add small white window in the dark buildings and a moon and stars if they chose.  I sprayed them with hair spray to set the chalk and mounted them on colorful paper. These turned out very well and the kids are pleased with their beautiful lit up cities!