Compostgirl's Tudor House project

Compostgirl ( aged 8 ) has been learning about the Tudor period at school. Over half term they were asked to do a project on Tudor Houses. Compostgirl decided to make a model and then do an annotated drawing. She researched from books and online, what the houses were made out of, what different houses would have been like (depending on how poor or rich you were) and decided to make a half timbered house, of the sort a moderately wealthy person would have lived in.

Its her idea and choice of materials, we have helped her a bit with the trickier bits like cutting up wood strips and sawing things, and finding materials for her.. She took a cardboard box, some polystyrene sheet to make up the jetty(the sticking out upper floor) covered it all in white card to look like the outside lime washed wattle and daub,




stuck thin black painted balsa strip (which she painted and cut up) on the box for the beams



and made a roof out of corrugated card, which she painted to look like a tiled roof.

She has cut up lots of small pieces of black wood strip and glued them in place to look like the beams. She also made little windows out of plastic sheet and glued them in place, surrounded by more "beams"





The roof was also dabbed with green paint, to look like moss, and she added some black staining around the chimneys to look like soot stain.



I know my lovely daughter is good at making things and has a huge love for history but I am astonished at how good this model is! I know she has had a fair bit of help from us, but in every case it was help to do things she tried to do herself but couldn't quite manage. Things like making the long strips of wood using a power saw(!) She did mark and cut the small beams herself having first painted them.

She has also drawn an annotated diagram of her house and written an explanation of what Tudor houses were like.



It has taken her 2 weeks to do and she has spent so much time and effort on it and it looks amazing!

Chimney detail




Front door detail



The finished article, front view



Side view.



Back view.



And finally, the front view again but with a very proud Compostgirl next to it.