NewLandOcean Gang - Boater's Delight

If you want to give this post 100% then you will set up the back ground music here before you continue.

OK, good.

Each Friday I volunteer at my favorite 3rd grade classroom to help make sure that today's kids get the attention, education and inspiration that they need to someday support my social security checks and keep the entertainment activities at my assisted living center top notch.  I love them.

Last week their teacher was trying to think of a game that we could make to help them remember all the explorers they were learning about as well as other math and spelling endeavours. 

Vasco da Gama - Portuguese explorer to first sail directly from Europe to India.  Yeah...never heard of him.

Three minutes of excited brainstorming had us envisioning a giant board where they could move their explorer game pieces around on the actual routes while getting scurvy and making crew members walk the plant.  Sadly, we couldn't work in the scurvy or planks (yet) so we went with the giant cloth gameboard with a whole lot of learning.

We cut out rough (real rough) paper templates for continents to position on our giant piece of blue (ocean) scrap fabric.

Fast forward through the next steps:

• Sew on pink felt fabric continents
• Color code the explorers and their routes.
• Marker the colored routes onto the fabric
• Add six felt stops along each explorer's route
• Print and laminate the explorer pictures with their coordinating colors
• Glue a small chunk of 'rough side' Velcro to the back of the explorers

Then, you will get this:

Before the kids could put their selected explorer on the board they had to say where he was from and what he was famous for.  They are so smart.

Each small group of kids answered all the questions on their handheld whiteboards in hopes that the explorer group whose turn it was would get it wrong so they could send them back a space.  It was quiet and intense, which is not the norm.  We played for a good chunk of the afternoon and there still wasn't a winner so the game was on pause until today.  I hope they are playing now.

The kids were into it and that makes me very happy.  But, not as happy as knowing that I am one step closer to cashing in that SS check at my local bingo hall.