Here's another guest post from Maggy at Red Ted Art. [Emma]
Hi, I am visiting again from over at Red Ted Art where we love reading books and crafting. Our favourite is to combine reading with a craft. It is a great way to reinforce ideas and concepts, as well as stimulate the imagination.
Pirates are big over at our house and having made some super duper easy pirate party invites, we now wanted to share our story, as well as another craft with you. This is the book that inspired this crafting:
- Mungo and the Picture Book Pirates by By Timothy Knapman
It is quite difficult to find “decent” pirate books for the younger age group (2-3yrs) – you do not want to scare the children and the same time you are “introducing” a rather random concept: Pirates. Suddenly, we adults are “arr”ing and “harr”ing and talking in a funny accent and expect our children to find this amusing!
This is as probably as good as pirate books go and my son loves it. The book stars Mungo, who loves reading pirate books at bedtime – preferably the same one over and over again. But what happens when you read a book too often? Well the protagonist gets tired of course and leaves to go on a holiday, leaving the damsel in distress to the evil pirates. Mungo is forced to step in and help out… you will have to read the book to find out what happened next!
We decided to make a some pirate boats – after all what is a pirate without a boat?!
I love this craft, as it is a “traditional” craft that many children make in Germany. However, I have memories of masts falling over and walnuts sinking. The ones we make today do neither.
You will need:
- A walnut
- A large knife & board to open
- Wax
- A tooth pick / small stick
- Paper or tape
- Water for swimming
How to:
- The hardest part of the craft is opening the walnut without breaking the shells – I usually manage with a LARGE knife on a chopping board; inserting it into any weak spots I can find and gently adding pressure. Needless to say an ADULT MUST DO THIS. Take care, please!!
- Drip some wax into the walnut: we had some lovely candles left over from Christmas – perfect. Don’t add too much wax, as it will weigh them down and MAY make them sink….
- Insert the stick or toothpick into the cooling wax
- We used pretty tape to stick on the toothpick, which we then cut down to size, but you can also draw a sail on a piece of paper, make two holes and thread it onto the pick. If the pick moves whilst you are doing this, just secure it in place again with more wax.
- Let cool and play!
For us this is a great little toy, to amuse my son in the garden, with small puddles or rain water captured in containers that we have standing around in the garden! Who needs expensive sand pits or toys?
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