Toy Boat - Read Along with Me

We brought Toy Boat by Randall de Sève home from the library because of the beautiful illustrations.  Once we read it though, I realized it was begging to be turned into an activity.

The little boy in the book has a toy boat that he made out of a can, a cork, a yellow pencil, and some white cloth.  He plays with it at the lake everyday, until one day it breaks loose and goes out into the lake and is tossed and battered by a storm and the other larger boats.  In the end, the little toy boat makes it back to his boy, and they're never seperated again.

We didn't have a can or a cork...so we made ours a little differently.  Besides, I thought we needed something guaranteed to float since I was doing it with Little Brother and Sweet Pea.  I started with a styrofoam meat tray.  Ours had been used, washed, and run through the dishwasher, so I felt it was safe.  You could try asking for some never-used ones in your meat department if you don't like the idea of used.

I started by giving the kids some crayons to color them with.

The crayons worked okay, but the colors weren't very bright, so I got brave and let Little Brother use a permanent marker...and watched him carefully.  Sweet Pea had to stick with the crayons.

Then I poked a pencil through for the mast.  (I made Little Brother's hole a bit to big, so we used some playdo to help it stand up straight...I would just recommend making a new hole because the playdo became a soggy mess by the end.)

Then I cut a sail and a flag out of some felt.

This would probably be a better activity to do during the summer when we could go play outside with them...but we used the bathtub instead.

They had fun (especially since they were wearing clothes in the bathtub!).

And even made a few storms of their own.

And even when their sails got wet and saggy and the pulled their pencils out...they styrofoam was still fun to play with in the bathtub.

If you're just now joining us, be sure to visit our Read-Along Archives to see the books we've already read.

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