Paper Boats: Will they sail?
A group of children wanted to make paper boats to sail in their PVC pipes.
But how do we make paper boats?
We noticed that the Grade 1 students have put up a poster with instructions on ‘How to Make a Paper Boat‘. We decided to follow the instructions to make the boats.
A team of boat makers practiced making the boats. They made boats of different sizes and used printed paper to make these boats.
We look forward to testing these boats on the PVC pipes.
The children began to share their theories.
- Liz “Putting in the water in the pipes, then is slides. I want to put lights inside the boats.”
- Lydia “I think there have lights.”
- Eli “The power and the boats will explode. My daddy told me that. If water touches power it will explode.”
- Oliver “The boats will get wet. And then if its wet it can’t float on the water.”
- Eli “It will melt if it goes on the water, it will just stay a little bit.”
- Wyatt “Boat is inside light and slowly go another way.”
- Motong “I think the boat will get wet because this is paper boat. I think that we can put something under it.”
The children paused to think about this problem. They began to think of solutions, to make sure the boats wouldn’t get wet when they were in the water.
- Oliver “Waterproof, that means protecting it from getting wet and broken.”
Oliver brings over a plastic sheet that is used on the projector.
- Oliver “It’s waterproof because it has no holes. If I blow it will not go through it because it has no holes. Maybe we can use this to make a boat.”
- Liz “I think the plastic make the boats.”
- Oliver “We can cover it with waterproof.”
- Morning “We can use plastic for making the boat.”
- Howie “We can put a plastic under the paper boat.”
- Oliver “We can make this thing become flat and make it into a boat.”
- Motong “I think put this under the paper boat.”
- Liz “Put a small paper boat inside the cup.”
- Oxford “We can use the whiteboards.”
- Wyatt “Boat put it in the wooden cup.”
Morning Agreed with Wyatt’s idea.
- Motong “We can put a glove on it.”
- Oxford “We can put a boat in the lunch box because lunchboxes are not made with paper.”
- Eli “We can use the plastic paper so no one will see it so people will think it is magic it won’t melt.”
- Howie “Put the boat inside the small plastic box.”
- Oliver “If we put the boat on the wooden cup the cup is too heavy, and it will get wet.”
Howie suggested the cane basket.
- Oliver “The basket has small holes the water will go in.”
Howie suggested the ceramic pot.
- Oxford “That is too heavy.”
- Jeongtoon “I see the paper boat making at home and the boat not wet. I don’t know.”
- Eunbyul “Paper boat is wet then plastic boat is big and paper is small.”
- Oliver “We can make it with something soft that will not get wet, it will float on the water. That might look like cotton.”
The children wanted to make sure the boats wouldn’t get wet because they had used special coloured paper to make them.
We will need to test some of the suggested objects to learn more about objects, materials and their properties.
CHALLENGE!
Jeongyoon was determined to make the smallest boat. He kept trying till he made one that was 2 cms. in length!