Ahoy! Viking Ships!

What’s a Viking without a Viking ship? After making our vikings we needed to add some sort of transportation to our Viking mural. I saw this photo of Viking Ships by Maureen. She had created them with her class a while back and posted on flickr.  Check out her blog. Her projects are really colorful and unique! I wanted to change her viking ships up a tad so I had the students in 4th grade use painted paper to create their ships. 

Inspiration 

I read a short story from D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths.

There are  many stories about the vikings in this beautifully illustrated book.

Production

Students created the sail from watercolored painted paper. We discussed how the wind blows into a sail then discussed shapes of sails such as trapezoids and parallelograms.

After the students drew their sail shape and cut the sails out they glued them on to a wooden craft stick to represent the mast. Students then created the viking ship, which is usually low and contains a scroll at the end. The boats were drawn and cut out of previously painted paper. 

Lastly, students glued the sail and boat together.

 Next students added the decorations to the sails and shields attached to the sides of the boat. Oil pastels were used by the students to draw patterns on the shields and texture on the boat. 

Here are the boats in the sea. I love how the students show large brush strokes in the water.