Straws, boats and a spot of messy play

As its pretty much rained all day today, the girls and I have had to stay inside.  Now my girls are not one for staying inside, they get a little stir crazy.  They like to be outside exploring, running and playing.  We had to make do with indoors, which altered our plans, but my eldest came up with a better one.  'Let's make some boats'

So we did, three to be exact.

We made our boats out of different materials to test how they would float.  If I had known this was the planned activity I would have made ice boats.  I think its a lovely way to teach children about melting, but we had plenty of fun with our boats.

The first boat we made was made from straws.  We tied bundles of straws together and created a raft shape.  I had some off cuts of felt that we used for each of our sails.  The thing is with straws is they are rather tempting to play with, so the girls did just that

straws everywhere

Luckily there was still a few straws left to make our boat

straw boat

For our next boat, I cut the bottom off a plastic box.  The box had previously contained chocolate brownie bites from Asda, so I had to eat all the brownies just so we could make the boat. Ah well.  

My eldest decorated her boat with foam shapes and again we added a straw felt sail

pirate boat

Our third and final boat we made from wooden sticks

making boatglue sticks


wooden boathelping with glue

After playing with all the straws [and the glue] we headed upstairs for a bath and to test out our boats.  Which one would float? 

The first boat we tested was the straw boat, it started quite well until the straws filled with water and then the boat began to sink.  My eldest thought this was very funny and kept getting the boat out the water to start again.  


testing boat

She started to use the boat as more of a submarine and asked me for her pirate boat.  I passed it to her and it floated really well.  Until my youngest got hold of it and took the sail off.  The girls enjoyed playing with this boat and passed it to each other on top of the water.  It soon became a scoop and they starting pouring water into the bath.


testing boat 2

Our final boat to try was the wooden sticks.  My eldest was very excited about this one, however I think the fact that all kids glue is washable may have lead to a slight boat mishap


broken boat

The girls had a lot of fun with the boats and both making them and playing with them was great messy play.

This day I love straws, boats and a spot of messy play

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