Dollhouse Project for Kids
If you are looking for a fun project to make with the kids while #stayingathome, building a dollhouse is a great project for ages 7 and up (or any age, depending on your kid). This Serendipity Shed is from the HBS/Miniatures site, but in the UK, there are many great online dollshouse stores as well, such as DollsHouse Emporium.
In New York City, parents volunteer to make an art project with their child’s class to sell at the school auction to benefit the public school. I volunteered to make this dollhouse library with my son’s third grade class. The class parents volunteered as well thankfully. And it sold!
Making the Dollhouse Kit
What you will need:
- the dollhouse kit
- acrylic paint in your choice of colors
- wood glue
- door handles (if you decide you want to add those) (also from HBS/Miniatures)
- masking tape or painters tape
- sandpaper
- recommended glue to put in window panes
The kit comes with instructions. So first, read the instructions. Second, dry-fit the kit, so you know how it fits together before you glue it with wood glue. Then I recommend gluing together the walls and the floor. Then paint the partial structure and the various pieces (like the windows) in your chosen colors. For the class, we painted all the the pieces separately because I needed activities for around 25 kids. Then glue it together. And Voila! You have a little dollhouse.
Dollhouse Project for Kids
My son’s class made everything in this dollhouse except for the bookshelves. (And that metal lamp). I bought the back one at #HBS/Miniatures. And I made the side bookshelves with popsicle and stirrer sticks and carboard, and then painted it white. We xeroxed/reduced the covers of their chosen favorite books. As you can see, Harry Potter and 13stories are favorites. And they glued the books together (cut up magazines serve as the inside pages).
The kids painted the walls white and the windows blue. (I did have to sand the window openings because I forgot to tell them to paint lightly there, so that the window fit inside.) They made the couch using a cardboard tea box and covering it with cotton balls and fabric and and then gluing it with fabric glue. (No sewing required.) And they made the plants by painting twisty ties green and then putting those in air-dry clay (covered with tea for dirt). We used bottle caps as planters.
If you and/or your child really enjoy this project, it’s a whole new world. There are so many videos on Youtube to watch!
Let’s Talk
How are you doing? Hope you are all doing well and #stayingsafe! We are all fine. We have been inside for a month. I received back a developmental edit on Partner Pursuit, so I was busy this week revising my MS accordingly.
3 Comments
Giulia
Oh wow, these dollhouses are amazing! I don’t know if my two boys will keep still long enough to make something like this but I’ll certainly give it a go. Thanks for the inspiration!
kstrobos
I hope they like it. The boys in the class seemed to like it. I realized that a better approach is to probably glue the walls and the floor together and then paint it. We couldn’t do that because I needed to have lots of kids painting different pieces so that I had enough activities for all the kids. But then you don’t have to worry about paint getting in the construction grooves. Also Minimum World in the UK has roomboxes, but it might be cheaper, even with shipping, to buy from HBS in the US.
kstrobos
I hope they like it. The boys in the class seemed to like it. I realized that a better approach is to probably glue the walls and the floor together and then paint it. We couldn’t do that because I needed to have lots of kids painting different pieces so that I had enough activities for all the kids. But then you don’t have to worry about paint getting in the construction grooves. Also Minimum World in the UK has roomboxes, but it might be cheaper, even with shipping, to buy from HBS in the US.