Cardboard House DYI Project

  

 Differentiation is the name of the game when working with special needs students in an art class. My high school and middle school students who are not in self contained classrooms can sometimes do the same projects that students in mainstream schools can do. Vision is not required for building a tactile, cardboard house. The only thing that stands in the way of someone who is blind, is that they may have never seen a chimney, dormer, or eave of a roof.

 

Each student came up with an idea: a beach house, a tower, a flower shop, an old church. They decided the dimentions, the placement of the door and the number of windows. Would it have shutters? a balcony? a chimney? stairs?

Cardboard was cut into the sides and front of buildings, cans were wrapped with cardboard from cereal boxes. Shingles were glued on one at a time. Beads were glued on for doorknobs.

The surface treatment was determined. Students chose bricks, wood slats, vinyl siding, stone. And then individual pieces of thin cardboard, or torn egg cartons were glued. And then each building was painted. Neat and tidy painting is hard enough for people with vision, but since all of my students are legally or completely blind, it. poses an even bigger problem. It made more sense for them to paint the doors and shutters separately before gluing them into place. Painted doors were glued onto pre-existing doors for example. And I made a bunch of long strips of mat board for students cut down into smaller segments and glue them on the insides of windows to create panes, and around doors and windows as wooden trim. This made a huge difference when it came craft because a lot of craft. The trim covered up sloppy edges and gaps.

The genius is in the details. A basic house shape can take a lot of different twists and turns depending on the colors, textures, and shapes of the details. I was so relieved that everyone had their own vision and the will to execute it.

This assignment took two weeks as opposed to my normal one week project, but the students stayed engaged for an hour a day, and almost all were able to work independently on arranging stones, bricks, shingles, and woodwork.