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We started our homeschool year this week and we are using My Father’s World: Adventures in U.S. History as our primary curriculum.
The first week introduces Leif Ericson and the first Europeans to discover America. As it is our first time studying history, I thought it only appropriate for our family to build a boat for the expedition we are embarking on.
To prep for the first day of school, the boys and I built the base of the boat out of three large, long cardboard boxes. This part of the process took approximately 45 minutes, three large boxes, a lot of packing tape, and three long cardboard poles.
I simply broke down the boxes and opened them up all the way. Once they were flat, I lined two of them up (we'll get to the other one in a little bit). The flaps that touch will be the bottom of your boat. The outer flaps will be the top of your boat. I taped together the flaps on the top side of two of the boxes. You could cut the flaps off of the top side if you want a shorter boat or if your boxes are taller. However, these were long and skinny boxes so I needed a little extra height. These taped boxes are going to be the length of your boat. If you would like it to be longer, I suggest taping two additional boxes to the end edges of your two taped boxes to extend them.
Then with the help of two very cute assistants, I matched up the ends of the two taped boxes making sure that the loose flaps were at the bottom and the taped flaps were at the top.
I overlapped the flaps of the first two sections of cardboard to form a right angle. This allowed me to line up the edges of the rest of the side of the box, which I taped together. I repeated this at the back of the boat. It was necessary to bend the last section of the box to get it to form the same angle because I was working with a rectangular box. If yours is square, you should be able to line it up the same way the front lined up.
Once you have the outer edges of your boat formed, make sure all of the bottom flaps are tucked underneath the ship (not sticking out at the bottom). I then took the remaining box and centered it on the interior floor of the boat to reinforce it. I bent the two end panels up perpendicular from the floor (this formed triangular sections at the bow and stern of the boat) and taped these end panels up along the sides against the side walls of the boat. Then I taped along the edge of the floor to secure it.
I then flipped the entire boat over and taped down each flap. Once everything was secured, the base was done.
To make the mast, I used three long stiff pieces of cardboard. You could use any lightweight, stiff poles for this: dowel rods, pvc pipes, etc. I taped a small box to the center of the bottom of the ship and cut a small slit to hold the longest pole vertically. (Do not insert the long pole, yet). I cut one of the poles in half and rested the two halves horizontally across the center of the ship, taping them with a gap just large enough to insert the longer pole. I then inserted the long pole into the slit in the small box. Using a LOT of tape, I secured all of the pieces. Wrapping the tape around the poles in a figure 8 helped tremendously with this.
For the top bar of the mast, I used the third pole and cut a section to the desired length. Centering at the top of the vertical pole, I used the same figure 8 taping method to secure it.
Now, my ship frame was ready for the first day of school!
To prep for the first day of school, I used two square boxes and cut “shields” out using a box cutter. To get a good circle, I traced the edge of a 5 gallon bucket. I cut two flaps from this same box into 8 small rectangles that will be used to hang the shields off of the side of the boat.
I cut a dragon out of another piece of cardboard. I cut a slit up it’s neck so that we could attach it easily to the front of the ship.
I taped together two long strips of drawing paper to make the sail. You could tape together any type of paper (wrapping paper would work well) or you could use an old sheet or a couple of yards of fabric.
On the first day of school, we painted all of the shields and made straps by taping on long strips of construction paper. We taped the small cardboard rectangles to the edge of the boat and the shields slipped over them. This made the shields removable for battle.
We decorated the sail with markers and taped it onto the mast. We talked about how the Vikings would paint their sails with stripes to look like dragon wings, but they wanted to draw Viking gods and crosses to show that the Vikings believed in other gods but some converted to Christianity.
The last step was the dragon. My oldest son painted both sides of the cutout and we slipped the dragon over the bow of the boat. Using tape to secure him, we tried to point him as straight as possible.
The boat was then ready for its maiden voyage! At least it was ready for us to take back to school pictures in it. Our "Sailing into the School Year" back to school printables are available for free in our TPT store.
It was a long process, but building a Viking boat was so much fun! We used it for our first day of school photos and then brought it inside to play with. Of course, by the end of the day the mast was down, but two days in the hull is still intact and it has become a favorite spot for reading, snacking, napping, playing, and pretty much everything else my kids have been doing. Stay tuned for our weekly posts chronicling the rest of our school year!
