Tiny Furniture – Bay Area Discovery Museum

Tiny Furniture

Children will consider scale, form, and function as they design and build tiny furniture to adorn the interior of miniature homes.

Materials Required

  • Various recycled materials including plastic, wood, tile, fabric, foam, and paper
  • Masking tape
  • Scissors
  • Bought or created tiny house (e.g. a purchased dollhouse, combined shoeboxes, or foam core used to create a tiny house)

Instructions

  1. Purchase, find, or create your own tiny house.
  2. Collect a variety of recycled materials for children to use to create their miniature furniture (e.g. cardboard scraps, colorful paper, yarn, fabric, or tile scraps). Sort and display the materials neatly.
  3. Invite children to design their own furniture to fit inside the tiny house. Help them brainstorm what types of furniture the house and its inhabitants might need.
  4. Encourage children to add their furniture to the collaborative houses.
  5. Children may engage in imaginary play as they arrange the houses and imagine/create people to occupy the houses.

Additional Tips

  • Create a few model pieces of furniture on your own to begin furnishing the house.
  • If working on this project for multiple days in a public space, curate the furniture in the house by keeping a few pieces of furniture each night and creating additional space for new children to add their furniture to each day.
  • In a classroom or camp setting, extend this activity by creating a narrative to accompany the tiny house, its furniture, and its inhabitants. Try a storytelling exercise or write a group book, imagining what might be happening inside the house.

Links to Creativity

One challenge that young children face is developing an understanding of models/symbols (one thing representing something else) and scale (relative size) (DeLoache, 1989; DeLoache & Marzolf, 1992). Although children have a great deal of experience observing and using normal sized furniture, in this activity, children are encouraged to design and construct tiny furniture. This exercise will push children to think through the connections between the furniture they see and use on a daily basis, and the much smaller items they aim to create (How can a tiny object be used to symbolize a chair? How big should the tiny chair be to match its surroundings?).

DeLoache, J.S. (1989). Young children’s understanding of the correspondence between a scale model and a larger space. Cognitive Development, 4, 121-139. doi: 10.1016/0885-2014(89)90012-9

DeLoache, J.S., & Marzolf, D.P. (1992). When a picture is not worth a thousand words: Young children’s understanding of pictures and models. Cognitive Development, 7, 317-329. doi: 10.1016/0885-2014(92)90019-N

Contributor

This activity was contributed by the Bay Area Discovery Museum. ©2016 Bay Area Discovery Museum. For more information and resources see BayAreaDiscoveryMuseum.org

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SCOPE OF ACTIVITY

CREATIVITY SKILLS USED

Children will consider scale, form, and function as they design and build tiny furniture to adorn the interior of miniature homes.

  • Various recycled materials including plastic, wood, tile, fabric, foam, and paper
  • Masking tape
  • Scissors
  • Bought or created tiny house (e.g. a purchased dollhouse, combined shoeboxes, or foam core used to create a tiny house)
  1. Purchase, find, or create your own tiny house.
  2. Collect a variety of recycled materials for children to use to create their miniature furniture (e.g. cardboard scraps, colorful paper, yarn, fabric, or tile scraps). Sort and display the materials neatly.
  3. Invite children to design their own furniture to fit inside the tiny house. Help them brainstorm what types of furniture the house and its inhabitants might need.
  4. Encourage children to add their furniture to the collaborative houses.
  5. Children may engage in imaginary play as they arrange the houses and imagine/create people to occupy the houses.
  • Create a few model pieces of furniture on your own to begin furnishing the house.
  • If working on this project for multiple days in a public space, curate the furniture in the house by keeping a few pieces of furniture each night and creating additional space for new children to add their furniture to each day.
  • In a classroom or camp setting, extend this activity by creating a narrative to accompany the tiny house, its furniture, and its inhabitants. Try a storytelling exercise or write a group book, imagining what might be happening inside the house.
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