Fun Summer Activities for Kids: Build a Lego City

For any family with an abundance of Lego blocks and a large play room or area that the children can transform, building a whole Lego city is a great summer project for kids. They will thoroughly enjoy constructing their favorite buildings, not to mention the endless hours playing through different scenarios from the mundane to the extraordinary once the city has been completed.

Build a Lego City: Pick an Approximate Scale

This first step is going to be closely related to the abundance of your Legos and the patience of your children. If you have more blocks than you could ever imagine being able to use, let the kids decide if they want the buildings to be 3 inches tall or 1 foot tall, or somewhere in between. If your supplies are more tightly constrained, consider working with smaller buildings, or having some buildings be larger if the kids want to be able to have things happen inside, and others be smaller and act as places where people can go, but where they can't really be played with inside.

Of course, it isn't completely necessary to pick a scale - you could just set your kids loose and let them do whatever they want. However, watch out for issues that may arise if one child is trying to make a large building and doesn't have enough blocks to complete it, so they are trying to take them from buildings your other kids have made.

Build a Lego City: Assign Buildings

This is where your children's varied interests and talents come into play. If you have a child who is really into cars, then let him put together a "car dealership" with lots of vehicles for the Lego characters to come buy and drive around the city. If your kids are more into playing house, let them build roofless houses with all the different rooms and furnishings they can create. For the business-minded entrepreneurial child, encourage them to make office buildings or other places of employment. Landscape designers can make parks and outdoor fountains. Aspiring chefs can make restaurants with lots of guest tables. The list goes on and on, but each child should have a specific thing that they are responsible for making in the city.

Build a Lego City: Lay Out the Buildings into a City

Once each child has completed the assigned element of the city, have them put the buildings together into a city, maybe even with streets connecting buildings to one another. If you have a play mat for toy cars or something similar, that could be the ideal setting for a Lego city. The important part here is that each child feel as if they made a valuable contribution to the city as a whole.

Build a Lego City: Play Different Scenarios

The most fun part of this whole activity is being able to play in the city once it has been made. Your children will use their imaginations for this one, and they can do anything from each picking a Lego person to act as their character and going about daily actions, to acting out detective missions and secret plots. If you have a lot of those space-themed Legos, maybe one child can make an alien spacecraft that will land in the city, and the rest can act out the chaos that ensues. The possibilities are endless, and perfect for any summer day.

For more fun summer activities for kids, see the index of all articles, with new activities being added daily!