On the blog today is an activity that Freddie’s school set him to make as part of his history lessons now we’re homeschooling: A Viking Longboat craft. I’m not going to lie- this was something that required a fair bit of adult input as some of the aspects of it are quite fiddly, but it was actually quite a fun thing to do together and there are still plenty of elements that the child can take full ownership of. Adults just required for some of the putting together!
You will need
- Brown cardboard (we used an old Amazon box)
- A longboat template (it’s very easy to draw your own on paper)
- Wooden skewers or even toothpicks
- White card
- Colouring pens/pencils
- Pencil
- Ruler
- Tape
- Scissors
- Ball of White Tack
Instructions
- On the cardboard, use your template to draw around (so you have two sides and a base that join together, see picture). Also cut out 8 little oar heads, and 4 ‘seats’ that are strips of cardboard about 1cm in width and 8 cm in length so that you can fold over roughly 2cm each end when you join them to your boat by sticking with tape (more on that shortly).
2. Then get your child to colour in their boat’s ‘heads’ before you construct and tape your boat into what will be its finished shape.
3. Your child can also then make the colourful shields to stick on either side of their boat – usually 3 per side.
4. To make the seats for the boat, fold over the strips of cardboard 2cm each end. Tape them down on one side of the boat, before joining them to the other side and also taping them (see photo).
5. To make the oars, stick your little cardboard oar heads to your cocktail sticks using some tape, and then carefully pierce the cardboard in 4 places on each side and feed the oars through.
6. Lastly, your child can make a sail by cutting out a square and colouring it red and white striped. Tape the sail to a wooden skewer, and stick to the bottom of your boat with white tack.
And there you have it, your very own Viking Longboat craft! As I said before, this is a great one to do together, and is something that can be a fun way of supporting the curriculum (especially if you have a year 4 child). We also found some great other resources for learning about Vikings on Twinkl.
See more of my crafts and activities for kids
