Making (tiny) Tiny Houses

As I said, the Tiny House movement is apparently a big thing in some places, and it was fun to learn a little more about it. Not sure it's compleeeetely practical with 8 children, but I'd love to live in one by myself! Ha ha. So, this assignment was for each child to make a tiny Tiny House—by which I mean, we used floor plans for real-life Tiny Houses, but we made them truly tiny! Dollhouse size.

My wonderful friend Carrie Ann, who teaches Interior Design at BYU, came over to teach a model-making workshop. She showed us how to cut foam board and make corners, how to attach flooring, how to use architect's scales, and so forth. She also brought examples of some of the models her students have made for Interior Design assignments.

After the children had some idea of how to go about constructing models, they went online and chose floor plans from real tiny houses. They converted the plans to 1/2" scale in Photoshop, and then printed them out and pasted them onto foam board.

The assignment was for each child to design a house that he or she could personally live in. (Daisy and Junie's house was for both of them.) They had to consider storage needs, cooking, bathrooms, etc., and use actual appliance dimensions, but they were allowed to customize the house to contain the things that they needed most (and leave out the things they didn't).

Two of the floor plans

It was so helpful to have already made a bunch of mistakes during our workshop with Carrie Ann, so we knew what to watch for when making our actual model houses!

Yes, there were still hot-glue-gun burns. But fewer of them than there might have been!

I was truly amazed at how well the children did with this assignment. They all got really into it (except maybe Malachi, who needed lots of help from Abe at the beginning—but he did a great job once he got going!) and I couldn't believe the darling, creative little touches they added to their tiny houses! We worked on these for about a week and half in all.

Malachi's house from above. He has a bedroom, a kitchen, a living area with couch, a desk, and a bathroom.

Malachi's toilet, sink, and desk with computer.

Sebastian's house from above. Seb's was probably the most meticulously constructed of all the houses. All his corners were tight and perfectly square, and his measurements were exact. He had a little shed with a separate entrance at the back of his house, plus a bathroom, kitchen/living area, and a computer area. ("I just sleep on the floor, or in my hammock," he said.)

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Great little details in Seb's house: • the doors that actually swing open and shut. • The little lawnmower in the shed! • And the keyboards and computer mice on the desk.

Abe's house was so great! He thought of all kinds of little household items to re-purpose for his house, and I couldn't believe all the creative uses he found for them!

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• Bathroom with opening toilet, sink, bath mat, and safety-pin shower curtain rings. • The little washer/dryer with a drum that really opens! • And of course the darling kitchen: pin-back stove, noodle faucet, tiny clothespin stools, and teeeeeny tiny little box of cheese-its, bag of Doritos, and bottle of root beer on the counter!

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More great details. • Abe's bedroom with bed, Civilization board game on the night table, TV remote on the other night table, DVDs of every season of Pysch, and White Collar playing on the TV. • Little computer desk and chair in a cozy nook. • Aerial view of the walk-in closet, with clothes bar and Abe's tiny fedora sitting on the shelf!

Daisy (8) and Junie (7) did their house together, but Daisy did most of the work. I helped with the more difficult cutting and some of the gluing, and the printing and manipulating of pictures in Photoshop. Daisy and I had lots of fun coming up with ideas of all sorts of tiny little items to decorate their house with. The girls have already played with it for hours!

Junie made a little "playhouse" all by herself, to go with the tiny house. You can see it on the left of the picture.

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• "Playhouse" from above. It had a porch, a stove, a chair, a bed, and (my favorite) a little hardwood dance floor to dance on! • The tiny house itself had a porch made of composite decking, with a toothpick railing and darling little planter boxes with flowers. • The girls made a flower garden with shrubs around the edges of the house, too.

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• Bedroom desk with pencil and paper, with flower in a vase by two books on the shelf above. Also a picture of a penguin and a pig (the girls' favorite animals) on the wall. • Eating area in the kitchen with two chairs, a table, and a microwave. You might also be able to make out a little note held on the fridge with a fluffball "magnet." It reminds Daisy to go to Activity Days at 4:15. :) • Daisy made this tiiiiiny frying pan with an egg in it, and a spatula to turn the egg with. On the shelf above you can see a box of macaroni and cheese, and a can of Pringles chips.

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More details: we took pictures of the girls (front and back) and printed them out tiny (to scale) and glued them onto foam board. • Here is Daisy standing at the sink washing dishes and looking out the cute little curtained window. • The girls have bunk beds with a ladder, and two tiny stuffed animals (a pig and a penguin) to snuggle with. • In the laundry room, you can see a washer, a clothesline, and two folded towels. The pink thing at the bottom is a bowl sink Daisy made, with a faucet over it.

A house fit for a queen—or two! Such a fun, fun project!

Construction Unit Study and Lesson Plan

I knew a unit on Construction would be fun for 3-year-old Teddy (and his grown-up counterpart, 12-year-old Sebastian) but I didn't anticipate how interesting ALL of us would find it! We have a few friends who are in the field of construction management, so we loved talking to them and getting to know a little more about what a construction career is like.

A few miscellaneous links:

Here are some answers to your burning questions about cement and concrete

This video shows the process and sequence of house construction 

This PVC house looks like something Seb would love to build. Maybe we'll try it another time.

Here's one of a zillion videos you can watch showing tiny houses for sale. They are so cute! I knew this was kind of becoming a trend, but I didn't know HOW popular these tiny houses have gotten. Apparently there are whole reality shows about them, etc.

We always like a good implosion/demolition video! There are more demolition resources here, from our Fireworks Unit. The girls did this same demolition activity with blocks again, and they loved it!

This bridge demolition was pretty cool too (done with heavy equipment, not explosives).

Some pictures of the night we had a guest speaker who is an Estimator for a construction company:

Kids listening to our guest speaker (enthralled) :)

He showed us his construction estimating software, and even bought some huge floor plans/blueprints for us to look at! It was awesome.