Historic Columbia | Building a Cityscape

A fun activity for the kids! Construct a Main Street Columbia skyscraper from your own home! Follow along with these instructions and let us know how you did. Which building did you choose?

As city’s grows over time and resources become more accessible, and technology develops, the number and variety of buildings in the city increases, changing the cityscape. You can see examples of this on Main Street in Columbia.

Structure Testing

Once you’ve finished constructing your building, measure it and note how tall it is here: _______________________________________________________
Let it stand on its own. Does it stay up by itself? If not, what changes can you make to improve your building? _______________________________________________________
If you made changes, what were they? Did they make your building better or worse? If they made it worse, would you go back to your previous design or make new changes? _______________________________________________________
If your design is able to stand on its own, add weights to test the stability of the structure. Use pennies, or other coins, as weights. How many pennies/ coins is your building able to hold? _______________________________________________________
If you’re still not happy with your building, keep making changes and then test again! Make sure to record your results.