Haunted Houses

Part 4 of the 5 Posts of Fright series

Have you ever noticed that almost all haunted houses on TV, in books, and other places all seem to look the same?  A little more research and you discover that all of these haunted houses share the gothic revival archictural style that was prevalent in the US in the early 1900's.  I found this lesson about haunted houses from another art teacher's blog and decided to use it as a way to teach the 4th graders about architectural styles and how different periods of time used different building elements and construction techniques that you can see if you look hard enough.

The students began by looking at famous haunted houses in TV and then we listed and created a study guide with images to inspire our own haunted creations.  The impossibility factor (having rooms that looked like they didn't fit onto the house) and Asymmetry of haunted houses are what drove our designs.   Then we began adding details and coloring in the house with black markers to give it a silhouette look that really brought out the colors in the windows which was from the background paper we created by coloring a paper towel with water based markers and the sprayed them on top of the white paper and let the colors bleed.  Fantastically creepy!