Friday's Art Smarts: Paper Bag Pirate Ships

Happy (belated) Talk Like a Pirate Day, Matey!

In case you missed it, it was yesterday, and it must've been somewhat official because Krispy Kreme was definitely giving away dozens of doughnuts for dressing and talking like a pirate. If that's not official, I don't know what is.

We, however, talk like a pirate most days since pirates happen to be one of Daniel's very favorite things right now. In fact, hardly a day goes by when Daniel isn't singing about going to Bag o' Bones Island. So even though it has absolutely nothing to do with our learning theme this week, I couldn't let the day pass without some sort of a celebration.

Materials:

1. brown paper lunch bags

2. stuffing material (we used magazine pages)

3. stapler

4. card stock cut into triangles

5. toothpicks

6. packaging tape

7. tempera paints

8. paint brushes

9. (optional) puffy paint

Process:

Project Ahoy!

Start by stuffing the paper bag full of your stuffing material. I told my kids to ball up the paper, but not too tight. Stuff until you've got a nice, full "ship."

After the kids stuffed, I folded the open end down into a sort of triangle and stapled the bag closed.

Then we opened our paints and got decorating. I just squirted a few drops of paint onto a little palette for each of them and they were allowed to brush and mix at will. I did not give them water for rinsing and instead told them to just wipe the brush dry on their palette before choosing a new color.

They painted their sails:

And their ships:

After the tempera paint dried, I opened the puffy paints and let them further decorate.

After that, we needed to let the ships dry overnight. They got a little carried away with the puffy paint. Arg!

This morning, we added the sails by pushing a toothpick into the top of the bag, positioning the sail in front of it, and taping it down. I also added a bit of tape between the card stock and the top of the bag to stabilize it.

Ta da!

Shiver me timbers - it was quick, easy, simple, and fun!

Let's go find some treasure!

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