Toilet-roll haunted house
Three or four toilet rolls become the towers of a haunted mansion, with pointy roofs, glowing windows and little ghosts peeking out.
Age : age 5+; the grown-up helps with the roofs
Materials
- 3 or 4 toilet rolls : Some a bit longer, some shorter: that's what gives towers of different heights.
- Purple, grey or black paint : Or coloured paper glued around them.
- Black or dark purple paper : For the cone roofs.
- Yellow paper : For the glowing windows.
- White paper and a black marker : For the little ghosts and the bat.
- A rectangle of cardboard : For the base.
- Glue, sticky tape, scissors
Steps
The towers
- Cut one or two rolls shorter so the towers are different heights.
- Paint the rolls (or wrap them in paper) and leave to dry.
- Cut windows out of the yellow paper: rectangles, arches, circles. Stick them on the towers; a bit wonky looks even more haunted.
- Draw an arched door at the bottom of the tallest tower.
Roofs and assembly
- For each roof: draw a circle a little bigger than the roll, cut it out, then cut a slit to the centre.
- Slide one edge over the other to make a cone and glue it.
- Sit each cone on its tower and fix it with a dab of glue.
- Glue the towers side by side on the cardboard base, the tallest in the middle.
- Add little white ghosts in some of the windows, a moon, and a bat on a skewer.
Pop an LED tea light inside the middle tower and cut real windows (grown-up, with a craft knife): the house lights up on Halloween night.
If it goes wrong
- The cone won't hold : A piece of tape on the inside of the cone.
- The towers fall over : A drop of hot glue (grown-up) or some sticky tack under each roll.
- The roll gets squashed when cutting : Cut with pointed scissors, turning the roll as you go, without flattening it.
Safety
- Only an LED tea light inside.
- The craft knife for the windows stays with the grown-up.