Toy Boat

The past two weeks we've had a few library books regarding boats: tugboats, harbor vessels, toy boats, etc. It has peaked Koen's interest in boats in general. One of his favorite books that we have been reading is Toy Boat. It's a great little story about a toy boat that mistakenly gets freed to sail in the open water amongst real boats. The illustrations are beautiful and Koen has really enjoyed this book by Randall de Seve.

Well, this morning Doug and Koen decided that they too would make a Toy Boat after the design of the toy boat in the book. (I'd personally be interested to know if the author made a boat in the same design to see if it would float like the one illustrated in the book).

Koen was so excited about this project. He put on his tool belt and hard hat, collected his other tools and Doug got his supplies out of the basement and the boys set to work.

First, Koen drew up a "plan." He has another Curious George book right now about George making a boat, but first he makes a play with a red crayon. Koen totally came up with drawing up a plan on his own and he was the one to pick the red crayon. So, from the plan versus the picture of the boat in the book you can see that this was going to be quite a thing to come up with.

Doug really enjoyed the creativity and engineering of this project too. He decided to go with more of a pontoon boat style for the hull to ensure that the boat would float.

The big test was setting the boat free in the bathtub for its maiden voyage. The boys were so excited..,it did indeed float (as long as the people (who Koen said were me and Daddy) weren't in it).

After a nice test sail, Koen and Doug "dry-docked" the boat at the edge of the tub so that it is ready for play tonight when Koen takes a bath.

This was definitely a fun start to the day for Doug & Koen!