Mayflower Boat Craft and Thanksgiving Study

Yesterday I started doing a Thanksgiving Study with my Kindergartener and Preschooler.  I thought it would be fun to change things up a little for their school time and talk about some of the history of Thanksgiving.  Will will continue this study until next Tuesday and then we will be off Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  If you are interested here is the curriculum I am using.  I did this with the girls 4 years ago and we really enjoyed it so I thought it would be fun to do it again with the boys!  A few of the things I was no longer able to print off so I just searched google for some similar activities and for my preschooler I found a few different worksheets more geared for his level.  I still had most of the needed books that I had ordered last time when doing this study.

Today we had fun making Mayflower Boats for the craft so I thought I would share what we did.  One of my girls even wanted to get in on the action!  The craft is super simple and something fun to do with younger kids even if you are not doing this unit study. 

SUPPLIES:

Applesauce or mandarin orange plastic cups

popsicle sticks

washable paint

Play-Doh

white paper

scissors

glue stick

DIRECTIONS:

Paint the applesauce cups with your desired paint color.  Here is the paint I used because….WASHABLE!  

I suggested brown to look like a boat, but my preschooler insisted on red.  Ya know..red is closer to the color of a fire truck so there was no talking him out of it! 🙂  I just put down some paper to protect the table and let them have at it.  If you are actually going to be putting your boats in water only paint the inside.  

While our boats were drying we prepared the sails.  I just cut out trapezoids and rectangles from white paper to make the sails.  

Then take your glue stick and put some glue on the top and middle of your popsicle stick.  

Add your sails. 

Once everything is dry you will be ready to finish assembling.  

We just took some Play-Doh and put it in the bottom of the boats to hold the sail.  

Then they stuck the sail in.  

And there you go!  A cute little Mayflower craft to go along with learning all about the Mayflower and what it was like when the Pilgrims made their journey.