Sunday 25 September 2011

The Old Lady Who Lived In A Shoe


There was an old lady,
Who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children,
She didn't know what to do.
She gave them some broth,
Without any bread.
And whipped them all soundly,
And sent them to bed. 

So what exactly was this shoe house like, what materials was it made from, was it a suitable residence?

We decided to find out.....

The children have been working on properties of materials for a while. We discussed the house and what type of materials we would need - they would need to be waterproof as we want to put the house outside. Lots of vocabulary that we had learnt previously came up again.  

We used welly-boots for the main structure of the house.



First we made the windows:

The children drew their window design onto a laminating sheet with permanent marker.


They chose fabrics for the curtains and placed them inside the laminating sheet, and around the windows. Then we laminated.



We cut the windows out leaving plenty of plastic around them to help with sticking them into the boot. We used a Stanley knife to cut the windows and door shape out of the boots. 


We stuck the windows over the hole on the inside of the boot with a glue gun. R stuck on an old picture frame for the door and L used a shell. 



We made ladders for the people to reach the doors with string, matchsticks and curtain rings.



Next we used lolly sticks to make the roof structure.



R covered his roof with tiles left over from our bathroom and some metal from a tomato purée tube. L used buttons to decorate her roof.


R added a fence so the people wouldn't fall off.


Then the children added buttons and fences to decorate the boots. R made a door canopy from plastic.



Here are the finished houses.

R's finished house


L's finished house


7 comments:

  1. Oh...these look fantastic...what. great idea....love the Venice photos and the zoo looks like loads of fun...xxx

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  2. Adorable! I want to make one too!

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  3. Can you make me one too? I am so doing this when we do this nursery rhyme!

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  4. How totally fabulous! I love each child's different and uniquely creative solutions!

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  5. This is wonderful! I can imagine all kinds of different shoes. Not to detract from what a great idea this is, I'm wondering however, how much you had to do (with the hot glue gun and cutting through the rubber) vs what they did. My kids could handle this (mostly) alone because they're older now. Although I would still probably use the x-acto knife with my youngest. I remember when my children were littler, how I loved to do all kinds of crafts with them and what a struggle it was for me not to 'do' it for them or choose a craft above their abilities. That said, my kids always loved the crafts. This is great how you tied it in with a book!!

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  6. We used the low temperature glue guns so they did most of the sticking themselves, but yes I did the cutting with the craft knife (where they told me to cut!).

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