Elementary School Lessons

A Science project about the environment: a house, trees and ornamental plants.

Sample house with a red roof and red door made by me. That is the younger daughter in the background making the paper house that we will use for the project. Click here for the pattern of the house.

Below are the daughter’s hands at work putting together the paper that will become a house:

Initial design idea in the photo below. We lacked paper so the front floor of the porch is cut short, lol. That was the paper that we used for the houses. I needed to add that part because that was where the railings of the porch was attached.

We decided to put up the trees after the daughter has cut the “leaves” or the green parts, the trunks and the wee fruits. I drew the design on the construction paper and she cut these out. Notice the lopsided roof, that was still unattached at this point.

Details are important to make this “imaginary” house and backyard seem real, hence the doghouse which very much looks like Blue’s Clues home, flowers that look real (some are made of fabric while the rest are embellishments) and trees at the back of the “property”. We then went on to put together the itty-bitty craft creations by pasting, using thumb tacks and using toothpicks for the flowers. Roof has not yet been glued.

Finally, after putting together the finished products: trees were attached to the trunks, fruits were pasted on the trees, roof was glued to the house, flower pots arranged neatly, doghouse glued near the entrance/gate and mini-fish pond added, we were all done. The mini-pond consisted of blue construction paper and its plastic container/cover glued on top to make it look like water. Daughter cut the fish while I made little rocks out of black construction paper scraps.

Notice the China flag in the background: while I was putting together the details, the daughter made the China flag she will use for the United Nations’ Day parade.

We were done before 5pm even if we started before 9am. In between I had to cook lunch and wash the plates <- taken cared of by the eldest child. Tiring day it was but definitely worth all the effort.