Buddy loves to build and be creative. So he was very excited when I asked him if he wanted to build his own boat.

I gave him a variety of foam base materials for the boat. He had parts of a styrofoam egg carton, a foam cup, a foam plate, and a couple of cut up pieces of pool noodle to choose from. Then he had a bunch of other materials to use to finish the boat including wooden skewers, straws, popsicle sticks, play doh, construction paper, coffee filters, and rubber bands.

Buddy decided to make two different boats. For his first, he used the top of the egg carton and a pool noodle slice for the base, and play doh, popsicle sticks, and a coffee filter for the sail. For his second boat, he chose another pool noodle slice, part of the bottom of the egg carton, a couple wooden skewers, a cup, and a straw.

Once both boats were built, Buddy was excited to try them out. Our water table wasn’t quite big enough for them, so we decided to test them in the bath tub. After a few minutes of playing on the side of the tub, Buddy decided he wanted to throw on his bathing suit and get in to play.

Buddy had a great time putting his little toys in the boats and pushing them around. Unfortunately, he quickly learned that play doh and the coffee filter weren’t very durable in the water. Buddy decided that he wanted to use the large egg carton boat as a balance to compare the weights of two things. He also was interested in seeing how much weight his boats could hold before they start to sink.

Buddy had a great time, and I’ve put the rest of the unused materials aside to do this again. It was so fun and I’m sure we will do it again some time soon.