Sailboat craft to float down a homemade river

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In this post I’m sharing about a sailboat craft I did with my kids, starting with what prompted us to do it!

Step 1: Read about sail boats

Lately, QBoy has been asking me to read the book Sail Away by Donald Crews to him over and over.

I decided to capitalize on his interest in sail boats by having the kids make their own sailboats to float down a homemade “river” similar to what I had seen in a post at Five Little Chefs.

Step 2: Make your own sailboat craft

I took our our craft sticks and some ribbon in order to make the sailboat masts.

The kids cut the ribbon to make a sail.

Then they glued the ribbons sails to the craft sticks masts.

Of course, we decided to add a bit of bling to our sailboats as well using our adhesive back jewels. 🙂

I had these wonderful little tin baking pans left over, and we decided to use them as our boats. (If you don’t have something like this, you could try fashioning your own boat out of tin foil, or even using the plastic lid from a cottage cheese or yogurt container.) The kids stuck their masts into a ball of play dough and then stuck the play dough into the boats to make the masts stand up. The less play dough you use, the better, because too much play dough makes the boat too heavy to sail.

The boats came out very cute!

Step 3: Make a river

I got out a 6″ folding table and laid it down on the grass with one end propped up. I imagine that a sloped driveway might also work well for this activity.

Sorry for the awful lighting in this photo.

Then the kids helped me roll a sheet of aluminum foil down the table to make our river.

Once we had the foil stretched the whole length of the table, we folded up the sides of the foil to help direct the flow of water.

Step 4: Float your sailboat craft down the river!

And that’s when the fun really began!

The kids used the hose to run water down the river.

The boats sailed down the river along with the rushing water, much to the kids delight!

More summer resources for learning and fun

More summer posts from Gift of Curiosity

• Rainbow bubbles
• Watermelon oobleck
• Ice chalk
• Hidden ice treasures
• Sun prints art activity
• Summer printables pack
• Summer do-a-dot printables
• Watermelon printables pack
• Watermelon do-a-dot printables
• Camping do-a-dot printables
• Ice cream I Spy
• Ice cream Sudoku

Looking for more summertime activities? Check out my Summer Activities for Kids page and my Summer Activities board on Pinterest.

Follow Gift of Curiosity’s board Summer on Pinterest.

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