Do-it-yourself: how to build a sailing ship with your children

What child has never dreamed of sailing on a magical sailing ship just like a protagonist of the most beautiful fairy tales and adventure stories? Galleons, pirate ships, sailing ships have always been elements of great charm which, in the common imagination, are associated with legends of the past and mysterious tales lost in a time that no longer exists.

To make your children dream and help them develop imagination and creativity, we thought of making a colorful sailing ship with a few simple moves. A box, a few rolls of paper, scissors, adhesive tape is all we need to create a wonderful sailing ship with our children.

Here are all the steps to take to build a colored paper galleon.

To build our sailing ship we will need:

  • a shoebox with lid
  • A net like a bag of oranges
  • 3 rolls of kitchen paper
  • 2 sticks like balloon support
  • 1 blue card (only one strip needed (approx. 3cm x 12cm)
  • 1 skewer
  • 3 plastic bottle caps
  • wool thread or twine (approx.30 cm)

See also

5 perfect school snacks for your kids!

DIY Pregnancy Test: Reliable or Popular Belief?

DIY Easter Eggs: 10 beautiful and easy-to-use decorations

The tools we will use are:

  • sturdy scissors
  • marker (brown or black)
  • flat tip brush
  • tempera orange and gold
  • Scotch tape
  • glue stick

Let's start by shaping the boat, using the shoe box. We make a vertical cut in the middle of the short side. We fold the edges of the cut inwards and fix them with adhesive tape. We help the box to stay closed by lifting the bottom upwards.

We cut the lid into three parts, taking care to calculate the measurements so that we have a section that is almost half the length of the total and two smaller ones.

We take the longest section of the lid from the cut ones and fit it inside the shoe box. With the help of scissors we make a small cut of a couple of centimeters on the lid, which ends with a rounded hole. The cut must be the size of our balloon sticks.

We cut the paper rolls in half lengthwise. We take each section and cut it again on the width side, in staggered measurements, so that we can get the segments needed to create a scale of measurements: from a small piece to a longer one. Each single part of the roll must be perforated in the middle of the long sides in order to insert them on the rods. They will be our sails.

We insert the rod with the sails into the cutout of the lid. It will be our mast. If necessary, tape can be added to stabilize the wand.

With the help of scissors, we make a hole in the base of the box that has been folded upwards. We insert the second rod with the sails. If we use balloon sticks, we unscrew the final support to insert it more easily into the hole, screwing it again from below.

On top of the masts of the sails we put some blue flags that we make with cardboard. We cut a strip of cardboard about 3 cm high and 12 cm long. We fold it to cut it in half, obtaining two rectangles of 3 cm by 6 cm. On one side of the rectangles we cut out a triangle to make the tips. We fold the opposite side by half a centimeter and fix the fold with adhesive tape, the latter being the space where the sails rod will be inserted.

On the last portion of the lid, we draw a swan that will become the head figurehead of our sailing ship. We cut it out and insert it into the inner point of the box, where it was closed with a tip.

We improve the sideboard of the ship by cutting the upper edge. About halfway along the side of the box, we trace a semicircle that will be cut with scissors, giving the side a wave-like appearance.

We apply the caps on the outer side of the side, fixing them with adhesive tape folded inside. Let's start decorating our sailing ship, using the gold color. We can draw waves or simple squiggles near the top edge. With the gold color we also decorate the swan.

We decorate the sails by painting vertical stripes. To begin, distribute the first brushstroke in the central part of the rolls and space the subsequent ones by a couple of centimeters. It is advisable that the tempera is not too fluid to prevent it from dripping, therefore a little water must be added.

Let's take the last advanced part of the lid. We trace a rudder and an inner edge of a couple of centimeters with a felt-tip pen and proceed to cut the excess part with scissors. It is the second level of the bridge that we are going to fit into the back of the box.

We fix the second bridge on the box by inserting the internal sides cut out in the space between the box and the first bridge on which we have positioned the mast. We draw the internal parts of the rudder with the brown marker.

The ship is almost finished. Let's insert the last details: I explain it in the tip, as well as the swan in the figurehead position, the woolen thread as a strap from the skewer to the nearest tree and the net that is threaded at the top of the second tree, passes on the back and is fixed inside the box. We are ready to sail!

Made by Daniela Poggi of Scuola in Soffitta

See all the photos: