A Brief History of Boats and Ships {Free Printables}

A Brief History of Boats and Ships

History is such a vast subject. Anything that happened, including yesterday, is history. So, pretty much anything can fall under that umbrella. I wanted to come up with a fun history lesson for my children with a hands-on craft and homemade printables (free for you in this post). We have also studied several ancient civilizations because we love history.

Take a look at what we learned. I hope you will find this appealing, easy and fun to do. The lesson can take as little or as long as you’d like. You can keep it brief and general or you can go in-depth and really study the subject of the history of boats & ships. We made the boat craft first and then played with the printable cards, but you can do it the other way around if you want. A Brief History of Boats and Ships

For this lesson, you will need:

  • walnuts, cracked, whole halves (I recommend 2-4 halves per child)
  • modeling clay
  • toothpicks for the sail (one per walnut boat)
  • small colorful right triangles for the sail
  • tape or tacky glue
  • printable boat and ship cards (free printable at the end of this post
  • laminator, laminating pouches, scissors (optional) A Brief History of Boats and Ships

For our walnut boats, we cracked them carefully and removed the insides. Then, we added a small blob of modeling clay to the bottom and pushed it down hard enough for it to “stick” to the bottom. After that, we taped the triangle to the toothpick to make a sail. The sail stood in the modeling clay so it can stand up. We matched the sails with the modeling clay, but that is entirely optional, of course. A Brief History of Boats and Ships

The fun part was to put the walnut boats to the test. We put water in a bowl and set our walnut boats inside. My children were fascinated that they floated. I confess, we did veer off history for a bit to talk about buoyancy and such. They loved blowing air into the sails and watching their walnut boats move! This craft is super easy and inexpensive to make and yet it entertained my children for a long time

A Brief History of Boats and Ships

And now, for the history part. We moved on to the History-of-ships-and-boats-cards 3 part cards. You can print the pdf file twice (in color) to create the typical Montessori 3-part cards. Or if you want to use them in a timeline or as reference, then print them once.

There are 6 cards and they can be arranged in order by date. Here is a link with more information on the history of each kind of boat and ship. The sky is the limit on how you want to use these cards, but this is how were used them: we started out matching them as 3-part cards. Then, we talked about the look of each ship and how they differ.

We also talked about sophistication, what they were used for, weight they could carry and how many men were needed to operate them. We even talked about which ones were our favorites and why! Next, I used 5 pieces of letter-sized paper taped together to create a timeline from 4000BC all the way to the 18th century. On the timeline, we place the cards in the correct order by date. A Brief History of Boats and Ships

We had so much fun with this lesson and we learned a lot. Maybe next time, I can make some 3-part cards of all kinds of modern-day boats and ships. 😉 Would you be interested in that lesson, too? Let me know in the comments below! But for now, click on the link to download your free printable set of the brief history of boats and ships.

History of ships and boats cards

You might also like:

5 Ancient Civilizations {Free Printable Art Activities for Kids}

The History & Celebration of Flag Day

Egypt Studies: Books, Resources, Free Printables, Ideas & Lessons

History Go Fish and Memory games

Similar Posts

2 Comments

  1. Hi I just wanted to comment:
    I am now 63 & have had 8 children of my own 3 with Dyslexia, 2 with Aspergers, 1 with ADHD & 1 with Epilepsy. For 14 years I educated some of my children at home & here in England you have to have an Education Officer who comes to check your children’s work & make sure the parent/parents are not nutty, are actually educating as they say they are, are not abusing their children & can provide a whole years Curriculum in advance as well as evidence of the past 12 months.

    So it isn’t made easy for us to educate at home & the stress levels can be extremely high. I pass on information to everyone I know when I find a good site like yours.

    What I am doing now is in its infancy, but I am supporting parents who have had any Autistic Spectrum Diagnosis for their child, by holding a bi-weekly club. I give support, discuss education, especially pre-school. I know from my own experiences that it is vital to teach as much of the social communication skills as possible, prior to the age of 5.

    I pass on web addresses & useful links & in all honesty 9 out of 10 of the sites I have found have been in the USA. You are so much freer with your information, you are most definitely generous with your freebies. Some of which I have used & can only bless you for them.
    A lot of the parents I am involved with are like I had to be, doing this on a shoestring. It is really hard during this unsure economic time to find the money that is needed to Home-Educate.
    This is why freebies, free resources, printables and any information that can be gained online is so precious.

    I wish I had had all these things available to me when I was doing home education. I did not even have a computer or internet access at the time & every piece of worksheets that I produced had to be by hand & duplicated three times for the three older children I was teaching at the time. I then had to work on separate sheets for the youngest.
    It involved me in reading a copious amount of books to get the information in the first place & I usually took 2/3 weeks holiday during the summer to research & produce my year of curriculum ideas to cover all subject.
    I am I suppose lucky that I had the type of brain that worked like a tree, I would get one idea in one subject & somehow managed to link those ideas, like tree branches across the whole curriculum.

    Now my energy levels are a lot lower & although I do not wish to give up, I have to say I am very reliant on the support that I get from sites like yours in the USA. I have recently been diagnosed with a small brain tumour, that gives me many headaches, but all the time I can mask the pain I will continue.
    I guess I wanted basically to say, how precious your site is to my mums & how much we thank you with all our hearts for the resources & freebies. A generation of children with problems will grow up the better for sites like yours…..God Bless You. Anne

    1. What a sweet comment! We are so happy to be able to inspire moms and give them support and information! That’s why we’re here, and it’s a blessing to hear from folks like you who encourage us to keep doing what we do! Thank you.

Leave a Reply to Anne Weir Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *