"Making Montessori Ours": Building A Cardboard Haunted House, Halloween Crafts At Home

We had so much fun building this haunted house! This house is inspired by the kids show Art Attack!! We made this from a box based on the "plans" that Xander drew. I taped it together and then we decorated. Xander chose orange and blue construction paper to create his floors and walls.

The original involved coating the entire taped structure with glue and newsprint. We felt like this would be a long drying period and wait until we could paint. That is a wonderful way to create a house that will last. For our purpose skipping the mache step was a little quicker for Xander, as he was mainly interested in decorating the house.

Mr. Xander built our creaky stairs with bendy cardboard. He drew skeletons with chalk on black construction paper, and I made doors that swing in front with tape for hinges. He absolutely had to have the painting of a lady with moving eyes. I cut a hole in the box behind her and drew blue eyes on a strip of heavy paper. We taped two more strips to hold it in place on the back of the box to slide the eyes back and forth.

This was an amazing project in that he designed the house on paper, and then we built it. He cut out all of the tiny pieces of paper to fit the house walls & floors. This was a fantastic hands on learning experience.