Sunday, October 19, 2014

Imagination Project: Pirate Ship!

Every two weeks, we have a major project that we build for our Imagination Time, which usually spans the length of that week. This began about a month and a half ago, when we began buying our diapers and wipes from an autoship site online. They come in a giant box - big enough for Katie, Will, myself and our small dog to sit inside all at once! Obviously, a box this grand needed something to be turned into instead of just throwing it out.



Our first box was very simple. Katie was obsessed with Puff the Magic Dragon, so we drew Puff on one flap, lyrics on two more, then climbed in and called it our ship to Honalee. It might not look like much, but it was enough to set our Imaginations sailing for that magical land!



The next box, combined with our old Honalee box, was turned into something that took a bit more time and creativity to make. Three hours of building and we had a car, complete with a steering wheel that spun (thanks to the top half of a gallon water jug that was hidden behind a cardboard panel dashboard), bumper stickers, license plate and gas petal that you could push down. Katie and Will spent many hours in it. They even enjoyed their first "drive in movie" in the living room!







The next box arrived yesterday. We said goodbye to the car, which had become a stuffed animal container in the nursery, and decided upon a project that would be our biggest yet - requiring all three of the boxes we had so far. Inspired by our choice to be pirates (and a toddler Tinkerbell) this Halloween, we set forth to make a pirate ship.

Not many people seem to make pirate ships out of cardboard boxes it seems, so all of our ideas came from us only. Two hours later, a box that we'd used to sail to Honalee, a car that we used for drive in movies, and our new box was a mighty pirate ship, complete with a compass, a steering wheel, a pirate flag, waves and portholes.







Once finished, the kids got dressed up and piled in. We researched a lot about pirates: about the parrots on the shoulders, sea monster legends, oceans and flags. We talked about parts of the ship, about the compass and it's directions, and how steering worked. We also turned our small dog into the sea monster, since she kept jumping up on the ship, and had lots of fun trying to "steer" away from the monster or distract the monster for our escape, Katie also enjoyed pretending to be sea sick and throw up overboard!








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