thinking about kid city

We're really excited to be able to offer our kids a space of their own at school - not a cubby, not a locker, but their very own multiple-foot room in Kid City that they will build for themselves. Today we started really planting seeds about how their Kid City will begin, evolve, and change depending on the Brightworks city ordinances, the needs of each kid in their own space, evacuation procedures, and building codes - aka, if the building is going to be more than one story tall, it has to hold the weight of all the collaborators at once.To help the kids think about where to start in their planning process, we asked city planner Adam Krivatsy to join us in talking about what kinds of important qualities cities must have in order to be functional, livable, and living.At lunch, Mackenzie told a story about Marco Polo describing to Genghis Khan all the cities he'd ever seen. When the cities he'd described all ended up being Venice from different perspectives, the kids offered up their own cities - their own views of their San Francisco.The mystery of the day was about the graffiti artist who kept tagging the inside of the cardboard hut that the kids made last week. The graffiti artist kept writing "Guess who?" all over the walls, and the kid detectives asked questions and compared everyone's handwriting to weed out the guilty party. Unfortunately, no one confessed, and no perp was found.What does a city look like? The city planners had to make a plan to make theirs work best.Legos were best for testing out theories.Google SketchUp has become a useful tool in planning the construction in Kid City.With the help of city designer Bryan Grunwald, the kids learned about managing the layout of a city. Where's the best place to build a bridge? A shopping center? The residential homes? Town square?We'll have to see what principles from Adam and Bryan become part of the plans for Kid City when construction starts next week!