Weekend Fun: Ship at Sea
One of the best parts of the classic story Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak is when “an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max” and he sails off “through night and day, and in and out of weeks, and almost over a year to where the wild things are.”
Make a three-masted ship tumbling over an ocean to where the wild things are as a scene to hang in your room!
What you need:
• 9-inch paper plate, plain (not too stiff)
• Can or cup to trace, about 2 inches in diameter
• Crayons, colored pencils, or markers
• Scissors
• Glue stick
• A piece of string or yarn, approx.. 12” long
• Ship template (see photo)
What you do:
• Use crayons or colored pencils to make an ocean on the bottom half of the paper plate. Tip #1: If you don’t have a paper plate, draw or trace a 9-inch circle, cut it out, and use that. Tip #2: Crayons or colored pencils work best because you can blend several colors to give the ocean depth (and we all know that oceans are very deep). Try blue and green, or gray and green, or gray and blue. Add darker lines of color for a rippling wave effect.
• Trace the can or cup on yellow, gold, white, or orange paper and then cut out the circle. Add a face or other detail to make it the sun or the moon shining down on the sea.
• Color the top half of the paper plate to be the sky – is it morning, evening, or nighttime on your sea?
• Print the ship template or draw it yourself. If you draw it, think of the ship’s bottom as a rectangle with a wing on each side. The three masts are like sticks, and the sails are two rectangles and a triangle.
• Cut out the ship shape and color it any way you like.
• Paste the sun or moon and the ship on the paper plate scene.
• Poke a hole at the top of the plate with a pencil and push the string through it.
• Tie a knot in the string and hang your sailing ship in your room!
What will you see when you get to where the wild things are? Draw that on the back of your paper plate scene!
