CLEVELAND — When you’re stuck inside, everything becomes a toy. For my youngest, who is just over a year and a half, a sink full of water, bubbles and bath toys kept her entertained for a while. Which got me thinking – how can I make this an activity for my older two?
Luckily, we had a small basket of sticks that my 6-year-old collected in the backyard an on a recent walk to the beach. I’ve seen grade school projects and Pinterest activities centered around “will it float” designs. So, I figured: Let’s exercise some brainstorming, problem solving and engineering.
First, we talked about how we have to design our small boat. On her own, Scarlett drew a square so she could measure out sticks to all be the same size. She broke the ends from ones that were too long and set aside the ones that are too small.
I made sure to ask her questions throughout, like: Do you think all the sticks will float? Will the boat be strong enough? How can we make sure it doesn’t fall apart?
Then I explained we needed two sticks on the end to stabilize the row of sticks together. Scarlett insisted that we needed a third stick for the middle of the raft, in case she wanted to put a toy on it.
Next, we weaved some string around the sticks to tie them all together with the stabilizing sticks.
Finally, it was time to test it out! She set it in the sink and happily watched it float around.
For my 4-year-old, she was a little too young to construct a stick raft. So, I took an empty milk carton and let her design a sailboat flag to stick into it.
The girls spent about half an hour racing their boats through the sink water. And the sink got sparkling clean!
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