This Halloween mini-project for elementary grades is perfect for helping your students apply their math and writing skills. Working both independently and in groups, they'll use measurement skills, persuasive writing, design thinking, and a healthy dose of artistic creativity to design, describe, and build a Halloween haunted house!
Students will design and lay out the floor plan for a haunted house by following a set of specifications, write and illustrate a persuasive paragraph advertising their haunted house as an attraction, and then build a 3D model of the house based on the floor plan.
This mini-project is perfect for 1 or 2 class periods, or can be divided up into smaller time blocks for completion as an early-finisher or extension activity. The cross-curricular activities include measurement, area and perimeter, descriptive and persuasive writing, and group collaboration.
What's Included:
- Teaching instructions with notes on materials, prep time, group work, and modeling;
- Step-by-step student instructions and worksheets for completing the design, writing, and illustration activities;
- Blank 1-inch grid graph paper for the design layouts;
- A 12-inch ruler (paper template) for use in designing and building the haunted houses.
Project Activities:
- Part 1 - Design Your Haunted House: Using the specifications, measurement skills, and 1-inch grid paper, design a haunted house that has a minimum and maximum number of rooms in the specified square footage, and lay out and label your design on graph paper (independent activity);
- Part 2 - Advertise Your Haunted House: Design and illustrate a promotional advertisement for your haunted house, making sure to include all the necessary information, and then write a persuasive, descriptive paragraph explaining why people should visit it (independent activity);
- Part 3 - Build a Model of a Haunted House: In a small group, use one of the floor plans designed in Part 1 to build a 3D model of the haunted house according to the specifications provided (group activity).
