About

Doll’s houses are miniature houses made for playing with dolls. Doll’s houses have been a popular toy for hundreds of years. Doll’s houses have miniature furniture in them, and some doll’s houses look exactly like real houses. Doll’s houses are normally made by hand, but they are also sold in toy shops. Doll’s houses can be any size you like. Doll’s houses are normally made to a ‘scale.’ They might be ten times smaller or twelve times smaller than a real house. Sometimes they are bigger than that, and sometimes smaller. If a doll’s house is ten times smaller, it means that a room in a real house that is 3 meters long (or 300 cm) will be 30 centimetres long in the doll’s house (300 cm ÷ 10 = 30 cm).
 

Your task

Design a doll’s house for a collection of dolls. They might be your dolls, or they might belong to your family or your friend. Design the furniture for the doll’s house too. Make your doll’s house and its furniture out of coloured cardboard and paper and other materials that you can find. You may make a complete doll’s house, or a part of it, such as a single room. Test your doll’s house by playing with it. You can play with it yourself, or have your sister, or brother, or a friend play with it. Work on this design topic in a small team with a group of your classmates.

Follow the design steps

To design something well, do it step-by-step and use the methods from the Design Thinking for Schools website. There are four design steps. The first step is LEARN. To design something, you must first learn about it. There is much to learn on any topic, and it is always interesting. Learning will help you to understand the thing that you are designing, so you can do a good job. The second step is DRAW. Try to think of as many different ideas as you can while you draw them with pencil on paper. Keep drawing until you have some ideas that you really like. Improve your ideas and combine them into a single excellent idea. Drawing is easy and fun. Enjoy it! The third step is MAKE. Make the thing that you are designing to show your teacher and classmates. You can only tell if your idea works by making it. Improve your idea while you are making it. Making something with your hands is fun too! The fourth step is TRY. Once you have made something, you should try it to see if it works or not. You can also let someone else try it to see what they think. When you try, you will often find ways to improve your design idea. That will make you a better designer.
 

​​​​​​​Note for teachers

Read the guide for teachers on Safety for the MAKE Step for Level II to safely supervise this design task.