Haunted Playhouse



Ghosts frolic in this haunted house!




You will need:

• Cardboard box (or boxes, depending on how detailed you plan on getting)
• Paint
• Box cutter
• Glue
• Markers
• Any scraps that you want to use for decorating your house
• Duct tape

How to:

1. Figure out how your house will stand and cut out what will be the back side of the house. Save for shutters, roof, extra floor, etc.
 

2. Cut out windows and doors (leaving part of the door uncut so that it will open and close)




When making the doors, be sure to keep part of the doors attached to the box so they'll open and close.


3. Paint box. You can use any color. Since we were doing a haunted house we used black and dark green.


4. Using the extra cardboard, make whatever features you want to add to your house. We made shutters, a roof and a second floor. To hold the second floor in place, I cut two slats on the sides of the house and slid a long piece of cardboard through both. This held up much better than taping it would have.

 



We created a sturdy second floor by sliding a piece of cardboard through two slats on each side of the box. I added "bricks" to the floor since I wasn't allowed to paint it.





We added a second floor and an attic to our house.


5. Once dry, tape any open box flaps closed; Glue on any decorations.

Thoughts:



The nice thing about this craft is you can go as simple or as elaborate as you want. If I had some major talent, I would've added some curtains, artwork and some kind of furniture to our house, but our attic feature was about as fancy as I could do. Elliott and I had fun trying to figure out what we would add to our house. (Shutters were OK on the front windows, but not welcome on the sides. Painting the inside of the house was alright as long as we didn't paint the second story floor.)

The residents of our house? The ghost sculptures and (surprise!) some Star Wars characters who like to live in the attic.

Elliott's Evaluation:

I only liked painting it. (Me: You didn't enjoy making this? Why?) I liked making it, but I only liked painting it because Mommy had to do the putting together part. I like playing with it. My ghosts like it.