Time: 5–10 minutes
Equipment: 3 corks per boat, 2 elastic bands, 1 toothpick, craft foam/paper, string, a ‘body of water’
Purpose/Topic: To explore floatation
AoPG: Intellectual, Physical
You can find the instructions here. This is such a cute idea:-)
Time: at least 10 minutes
Equipment: straws, blu-tack, a ‘body of water’
Purpose/Topic: To explore floatation
AoPG: Intellectual, Physical
Give each Joey Scout a couple of straws and a lump of blu-tack. Give the Joey Scouts time to construct a boat from the pieces. Ideally, they should have a chance to test their boats (in the body of water), and revise their designs.
Time: at least 10 minutes
Equipment: straws, alfoil; a ‘body of water’; coins
Purpose/Topic: To explore floatation
AoPG: Intellectual, Physical
Give each Joey Scout (or pair of Joey Scouts) a couple of straws and a piece of alfoil.
Give the Joey Scouts 10 minutes to construct a boat, aiming to support as many coins as possible.
Test each boat, to see how many coins it can hold.
Time: at least 10 minutes
Equipment: Pool noodles, wooden skewers, craft foam, a ‘body of water’
Purpose/Topic: To explore floatation
AoPG: Intellectual, Physical
Ahead of time, cut the pool noodles into pieces 10 cm long. Cut a variety of large triangles from the pieces of craft foam.
Give each Joey Scout a couple of pieces of pool noodle, a couple of skewers and at least one triangle of craft foam. Give the Joey Scouts time to construct a boat from the pieces. Ideally, they should have a chance to test their boats (in the body of water), and revise their designs.
As a follow-up, get the Joey Scouts to pair up and combine their boats to make one.
Time: 10 minutes
Equipment: small squares or rectangles of paper (A5 or A6), copies of instructions (choose one from this link), a ‘body of water’
Purpose/Topic: To explore floatation
AoPG: Intellectual, Physical
Follow the instructions you chose. Play with the boats in the water.
Time: at least 10 minutes
Equipment: 1 litre milk cartons, box-cutter, wool, duct tape, hole saw discs, dowel (same diameter as the centre of the hole saw discs), glue, square of paper, hole punch, a ‘body of water’
Purpose/Topic: To explore floatation
AoPG: Intellectual, Physical
Before the activity, wash the cartons well, then use the box-cutter to remove most of one face of one milk carton for each Joey Scout. Choose the ‘top face’ if the carton is laid to have a bow. Cut the wool into metre lengths. Cut the dowel into 30 centimetre lengths. Insert a dowel into each disc and glue in place.
Give each Joey Scout a milk carton, and a piece of wool. They should tie the wool through the open spout, then tape it up. Glue a disc/dowel piece into the centre of the carton, to form the mast.
Each Joey Scout should decorate a piece of paper to form the sail. Bend in half (don’t crease) from top to bottom, and use the hole punch to punch a hole in the centre of the top and bottom. Unbend, and slide holes over the mast.
Sail on the body of water. Depending on the glue, you may need to leave this stage for another day.
Time: variable
Equipment: ‘boats’ made of small floating things (sticks, leaves, bottle lids); water source
Purpose/Topic:
AoPG: Physical, Social
Joey Scouts find small floating things, and race them. They can either let nature take it’s course (probably only suitable if the water is moving, as in down a stream), or they could blow on the ‘boats’ to make them move (most suitable if the water is still, as in across a bucket or paddle pool).
Time: variable (probably one minute per Joey Scout, most like more than one turn)
Equipment: 2 inner tubes, 4 pieces of rope, helpers, lifejackets
Purpose: to give Joeys confidence in the water, and familiarity with lifejackets in the water
Topic: Lifejackets, Water Safety
AoPG: Intellectual, Character, Social
Tie two pieces of rope to opposite sides of one inner tube. Do the same for the other set. An adult wades into the water, taking one of the ropes with them. The inner tube sits on the beach.
Form two teams. Each Joey Scout should be wearing a well-fitting life jacket. One Joey Scout from each team hops on an inner tube. They are pulled into the water. When they reach the adults who are pulling, the rest of the Joeys Scouts pull them back to shore. Another Joey Scouts has a turn.
A Little Blue Book 