We are keeping ourselves busy with plenty of activities this week for our Seaside & Rockpools unit, and despite some nasty teething and one hell of a developmental surge for Squirrel, we are charging through and making the most of the remaining English sunshine.
Today we made our very simple boats to float in our water table, along with other activities including rockpooling and seaweed dipping in our water table.
For this activity, which explores observing floating, applied weights, and wind forces – as well as a little colouring!
We used:
Clean chicken trays that we picked up from the art scrapstore
Straws
Trimmed down card with 2 cuts down the centre
Squirrel enjoyed colouring and stamping his boat sails, and I used a glue gun to stick the staws to the trays last week while preparing other materials.
Squirrel chose a couple of passengers, Fluttershy and Triceratops and off out to the garden we trooped!
We slid the sails over the straws, and gently put them down on the water. (I say gently, the intention was gentle, but Squirrel was excited to see things going into the water, and consequently, the boat came under immediate fire of other objects, including triceratops and Fluttershy, who were soon rescued to go into the boat.)
His attention was caught as soon as the sails caught a breeze and -gasp! Moved independently! He watched as invisible forces pushed the boat across the surface of the water over and over until the breeze died down…
… when naturally, he started wanting to push it across himself, leaning into the water table and using spades and other toys to poke at the boat to make it move.
Eventually though, Triceratops and Fluttershy were roughly grabbed from their voyage and taken to play on (read, be thrown down) the slide!
This is an activity post for Unit 1. The Seaside & Rockpool.
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