Sailing Out of the Box!

When I was approached with an awesome idea from Tinker Lab about getting creative with a cardboard box, I knew straight away that this was something we were IN for! She is celebrating her blogging anniversary and what a great way to celebrate! It's one big blog party!! We have been wanting to make a spaceship for quite some time, but when the time to truly decide came around, the ideas were flying around like crazy!!


Gabriel: More Railroad and Car track like we made before:
http://michellescharmworld.blogspot.com/2011/04/craft-in-minute.html

Autumn: Wagon to pull kids and animals in

Roman: Circus Train

Gabriel: Roller Coaster

Roman: Race Car

Autumn: Space Ship

Roman: BOAT!!!

The Boat was obviously the winner and this is them working on it!
It is meant to be a child led activity and I am only there to help with the sharp stuff and to finish out an idea they have. Gabriel can be seen in the above photo gluing on the waves, they brought out our blue blanket that we usually keep in the car for outdoor activities and such. Roman is inside holding the glue on the dials and Autumn is fixing up the flag. They had a rough time with the flag and went through many different materials, before settling on a dowel that I happened to have! (first they tried paper towel tubes, then a wire hanger)

First things first, the little guy insisted it be named after him! hahaha!!! The Roman it became, and then it turned into a lesson as after my oldest wrote the name Roman insisted that there was NO Q in his name! The lower case A looked like a Q to him!

They put in a site scope because this started out as a pirate ship, if you look to the extreme right of the boat, you can see where it started to tear when they tried to get 2 of them to fit in the boat! haha

We used toilet paper tubes and old Disney World maps to make 3 sets of binoculars, when it became a whale watching boat (and penguins!!). They were able to do these themselves after I made the holes for the laces to go through and tied the knots.

Finally, they settled and it has remained a fishing boat! We were in the Dells and they saw some people fishing from their boats as we took a boat tour and I'm pretty sure that's where they got the idea from! I cut the fish, as it was cardboard and drilled the holes to make the fishing poles. They hooked on the paper clips and glued down the magnets!

All in all we have had a blast and the best part? This boat and 'river' have stayed in our living room for over a week and the kids keep playing with it almost daily! Please check out the linky and join us on everyone's cardboard box adventures!!!

~Michelle!~

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The Week in Photos!

Look at what the Leprechaun brought! The kids had to follow his footsteps to see all the goodies he brought them! After finding out the mischief that he caused! (He put the boys sock bin in Autumn's room and her sock bin in the Boy's dresser! He also dropped some green food coloring in the milk!). We are looking to make a small herb container garden, so he brought us those goodies and some Science books to read an also some fantastic reference fan out cards about the 50 states for our geography corner and one about trees for our nature table to help us identify the leaves we find!

BOATS! We made sponge boats while learning about floating and sinking and wind power! We made them for our craft-of-the-day and then floated them in the newly-uncovered-for-the-Season water table! (can you tell how excited we are for Spring in the Midwest??)
Our Nature Table is finally ready for Spring, now that we have cleared out the Winter finds!

Read more on yesterday's post at Corner of my Home!
This is our educational nook, it was a disaster from a busy weekend, so I got to work this week in organizing it back to how it should look! I will go into more depth on this corner of my home next week!

Another craft-of-the-day project! We made tea bags Waldorf style for our tea parties! This was an easy and fun project that even the 3 year old got involved with!

Another excellent week has gone by and I would like to think I am quite Blessed!