If I Built A House
Listen to a story on YouTube and then create your own dream home from materials you can find in your house.
Overview
In this 20 minute activity, you and your child will listen to a story on YouTube about a boy who designs his dream home. Then you can use the story as inspiration to build your own house using materials you will already have at home. The activity takes about 20 minutes and is easy to set up. It’s suitable for ages 4 and up.
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What you’ll need
- Something to watch YouTube on
- A variety of materials from around your house
Duration
20 minutes.
Suitable for…
Age 4 and up.
Safety notes
You know your children better than anyone, and you should judge whether they’re ready for this activity. You might want to think in particular about:
- Supervision: the activity involves building things, so there’s a trip hazard.
- If you’re using full tins, they might be a bit heavy if the house falls over.
What to do
Step 1: Watch the story together
Sit down and watch the story ‘If I Built a House’. If you can, find somewhere comfortable and watch it together.
Step 2: Talk about the story
Talk about the story. Ask:
- What was your favourite room in the house in the story? Why did you like it?
- What do you like about our house?
- Would you like to build a house like ours or a house like the one in the story?
You could listen to the story again and pause the video to look more closely at all the different rooms.
Step 3: Create your own house
Decide on the materials you are going to build your house from. This will depend on what you have available, and how big you want it to be.
For a small house you could use:
- Building blocks, Duplo, LEGO, or other construction toys
- Old greetings cards or playing cards
- Play Doh, or modelling clay
- Empty cardboard boxes, toilet or kitchen roll tubes, washed out yoghurt pots, margarine containers
- Tins and boxes of food
- Sticky tape, masking tape, pegs, blue tac to hold it together – or you could just balance it!
For a house you can get inside you can use:
- Blankets, towels, sheets or duvet covers
- Chairs, tables or bunk beds
- Pegs or string to hold things in place
- Large cardboard boxes
- Washing baskets and clothes driers
If building isn’t your thing, then you could draw your dream house instead.
A house built from tins and food packets.
An example blanket house from WikiHow.
Things to discuss
Once you’ve gathered your materials you can start to plan. You can ask:
- What do you think we should build first?
- What should we build it from?
- What else will we need?
- What else could we put in that room?
- How can we stick that together?
- Are there any more rooms we could build?
- What else does a house need?
Other things to try
- Drawing a picture of your house to add more detail
- Drawing a plan of your house, labelling the different rooms
- Building each room from different materials then joining them all together
More activities based on this story can be found on this page from Inventors of Tomorrow.
What you’ll need
- Something to watch YouTube on
- A variety of materials from around your house
Duration
20 minutes.
Suitable for…
Age 4 and up.
Safety notes
You know your children better than anyone, and you should judge whether they’re ready for this activity. You might want to think in particular about:
- Supervision: the activity involves building things, so there’s a trip hazard.
- If you’re using full tins, they might be a bit heavy if the house falls over.
