Cork Raft Building Challenge for Kids

We love playing and crafting with recyclables. Things that might be considered “junk” are some of our favourite craft supplies. Today we are excited to participating in The Best Toys for Toddlers’ Junk Play Challenge. We selected cork to play with. We seem to have an endless supply of wine bottle corks and yet we haven’t really explored crafting with them. This week I decided to put a cork raft challenge to my youngest daughter…see what she could create. 

Cork Raft Building Challenge

So, what was our cork raft challenge? I challenged my daughter to build a mode of transportation for a family of 4 wooden peg people. The people had to be transported across water. I provided a few supplies; wine corks, toothpicks, paints, cardboard, string and a glue gun…but she had access to any supplies we had in our house. 

It took her a couple of hours of thinking and then she got to work. I loved watching her mind work. How would the people fit on the cork? How many corks would she need? How would she bind the corks together? How would whatever she made actually move?

She floated around a few different ideas (pardon the pun), and decided to make a raft. Through trial and error, she decided to tie the corks together with the leather strings. We used the glue gun to adhere the sets of cork together…making a larger raft.

How to move the raft? She decided to use the ends of the string she used to tie the corks together. She braided together  the strings to make a tow rope. Thus, the raft could move across the water.

Once the raft base was built the next challenge was holding the peg family. The solution was to make a “rug” out of cardboard and use the glue gun to adhere it to the raft. My daughter carefully balanced the people on the rug as we placed the raft in the bowl of water.

SUCCESS! The raft floated and was easily towed around the bowl. We hope to take the raft down to the ravine later this week. This was a fabulous science, design and build activity for my daughter. We had great discussions about buoyancy, friction and movement…all topics she is learning about at school right now. This activity was hands on science learning and it was a lot of fun.

How might you and your children have answered the cork boat challenge?

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