Building and Floating an Ark

Recently we have been reading the story of Noah and whenever I read about how God asked Noah to build an ark, my three-year old pipes up and asks if he too can build an ark.  I was trying to think of how he (or anyone!) could do this in a way that wouldn't be too time-consuming and that would be successful (ie, the ark would float and not sink).  I decided the building element to the activity would involve sticking two plastic containers together - one to house the animals and one to house Noah.

To start the activity I gave the boys some foam rectangles (flags) and pens so they could identify their arks floating on the water.

Then I gave the boys the first container and a basket of animal figurines for them to choose and place in their "arks".  At first they took a handful of animals, but once they had placed the animals in their containers we tried to identify them.  This was an important part of the activity to help the boys appreciate the variety and beauty of the animals that were preserved that day.

When the arks were full, the boys chose their human figurines. Unfortunately the second container was only large enough to hold one figurine so Wugs chose Noah's wife to go in his ark and Dooey chose Noah.  We then sealed our arks with sellotape.  (Whilst pulling out the clear tape, two pairs of eyes spotted the shiny coloured tape I was saving for Christmas so they asked to decorate their arks with it which is why the arks ended up looking like two Christmas presents floating on the water!)

Once everything was sealed down I made two cuts in the flags and wedged a craft stick through them, joining the bottom of the craft sticks to bottom plastic container through an incision I made in the container lid.

We were finally ready to float our arks!

As it was a warm day, I set up the activity in the garden, filling up a large plastic tub with water and then emptying some stones into it.  The boys took their arks outside and began to float them and blew them to get them moving in different directions.  We had a funnel with small holes in it, so I encouraged the boys to lift it up to create "rain" and to see if their arks could weather the storm.

What we used:
Foam (optional)
Craft sticks (optional)
Pens (optional)
A shallow container with a lid
A deeper container upturned
Sellotape
Shiny coloured tape (optional)
Animal and human figurines
Large tub
Stones
Blue food colouring (optional - but effective in making the arks look like they were in the sea)

Please click here to see our other Noah's Ark-related activities.