Material Required to Make a Houseboat: the covers of two large shoe-boxes, and the lower half of a child’s shoe-box.

Here is a jolly houseboat, the very thing to sail on Silver Paper Lake. Little dolls may spend their vacation upon it. Would you like to make a houseboat to play with? It is not difficult.

First, take the two shoe-box covers and glue them top to top. Place them on the floor flat. There is the lower half of the houseboat.

Upon both long sides of your small shoe-box, draw three one-inch squares, keeping the two at either end of the same side equally distant from the nearest corner of the box, and making the third window on each side half-way between them. (To cut windows with awnings, see Diagram One, C, page 166.) Cut the window squares at both sides and along their base lines. Bend the cardboard outward and upward to make the awnings. Color these with red stripes, using either chalks or water-color paints.

On the front and rear ends of the houseboat, you will need a door and window. Make an upright oblong space for the door. Mark it out with pencil about three inches high from the rim of the box. Make a window beside each door. (To cut door space, see Diagram Two, A, page 167.) Cut top line and down one side. Bend the door outward on the third side as if it were on a hinge.

A flagstaff for the houseboat is made by pressing the point of a long pencil down through the top of the houseboat in front. A paper pennant may be glued to the side of the pencil.

A piece of string will make a tow-line for the houseboat. Fasten it to any little donkey or toy horse you have, and start penny dolls on a voyage around the play-room floor. The houseboat, of course, is not meant to sail upon dangerous water. It might be safely anchored on the shore of Mirror Lake or Silver Paper Lake.