Olivia N.'s skyline included a concert hall and a harp-shaped building for music classes. "It's not what you are assigned to do but what inspires you," she said.

Olivia is one of the Mann 5th graders in Ms. Klemp-Florczak's art class who recently designed and created their own large-scale skylines, painted on corrugated board. Adrienne McMullen, local architect and coordinator for OPEF's Architecture Adventure, used Chicago's skyline and examples from other cities to give the students a sense of overall skylines as well as landmark buildings.

The skylines were recently on display in the windows of Red Hen Bread, 736 Lake Street in Oak Park.

Part of the project was to learn about mixing colors. Peter G. was experimenting with two different shades of red to get the look of "simulated bricks." Alexandra H. said, "I needed to add more color to make it stand out since when this dries it looks really pale."

James K. created a skyline of chess pieces, sketched and painted with great precision. Katie D's skyline featured a giant hourglass in the center. As she explained, "This end [of the skyline] is sun and summer and this end is winter and the moon, with the hourglass running down in between."

Ms. Klemp-Florczak said, "They have wanted to come in at lunch to work on these. They are really working hard and enthusiastic about it."

Be sure to check out this slideshow of photos by Patti Quilling and Adrienne McMullen.