This was the last project I did with my kids before my placement was up, and I wish I had just a week more to finish it up! It took way longer than I anticipated but it got so much engagement.

I remember doing this same project when I was in elementary school, so I decided to try it with my older students, but ended up bringing it around to all of my students because they were having so much fun designing these kookie Victorian houses. Examples below and more information under.

• We started with a slide show with pictures of Victorian houses and the kids pointing out different features of them. I guided them to important features if they were missing. We talked about how houses are art and how they were going to design their own Victorian houses, full of the details and vibrancies of the ones we looked at.
• They started with sketching their homes on paper, thinking of what designs and details they could make.
• Next class they had to make a final copy of their homes in pencil, they were strongly encouraged to use the rulers to help their lines be super straight and their angles sharp.
• Next they had to go over those lines in sharpie and then color. While at first I was pretty stringent about only using pencils, they quickly convinced me to let them use other materials and I’m glad they did because the variety in houses came out so good.
• The houses had to have details, strongly encouraged to have color, and not be floating in space.

Because I had to leave, a lot of the houses are still unfinished, but the ones that were finished came out so amazing, and I think I will continue this project for years to come. It also created a really fantastically cute bulletin board of a neighborhood of houses they kids made, where their houses were on their teachers/grades’ “street.” The kids were so into it and would proudly tell me about all the Victorian houses they saw out in the world!