Activities Ideas

The Tobacco House of Horrors

Time: Several hours to put it all together

Materials: Framing poles and canvas for shell, paint, garbage bags, silly putty for mucous/blood, molasses, baby swimming pool, and wood and nails for teeth.

Note: This activity was designed by Watauga High School´s Smokefree Class of 2000 Club to be used at the school´s end-of-school celebration.  It would work well at school or community fair, carnival, festival, or other celebration, especially a Halloween party. 

Objective: to create a Tobacco House of Horrors, where students can walk through and "experience" several of the negative consequences of tobacco use for themselves.  

Instructions: Construct a multi-room Tobacco House of Horrors.  The first three rooms represent the mouth, trachea, and lungs.  The first room can be a large "Mr. Gross Mouth" type room.  The second room is a "trachea chamber" equipped with strips of black plastic trash bags to resemble cilia set in motion or slowed by an electric fan.  The third room simulates lungs with alveoli.  Alveoli can be made from a baby swimming pool lined with molasses to mimic ruptured, damaged, and tar filled alveoli.  

Create a "show and tell" room with examples of healthy and unhealthy lungs, mouths, and so on.  Other rooms can include a funeral for Joe Camel, and a graveyard of "ex-smokers".  Use your imaginations when coming up with the rooms for your house of horrors - the grosser and scarier, the better!