Building Ye Olden Days

This week Jake had a project due for social studies class.  He and his partner were building a shipyard from the Colonial Boston era.  He's known about it for awhile, but other than the little work he did in class on it, there wasn't much done until Sunday night when we started figuring out a schedule for the week to get it accomplished.

Monday I picked up supplies and Monday night he built the actual dock.

I was in charge of cutting the Popsicle sticks with the only thing we could find that worked - the small hedge clipper things.  Popsicle sticks/branches = wood.  It's all good.

Tuesday night he started working again and without really intending to we just pushed through to finish and be done with it.

He really wanted something for texture on the roof and I showed him how to emboss.  (Thank you crafting supplies!)  He was THRILLED with that little heat gun and after he saw what it did to the embossing powder he grabbed that thing out of my hand lickety split!  Then I had to jump away because he kept aiming it at my fingers as I held the paper for him!

We were pretty excited about the rock idea along the water and especially excited about the big rock in the middle of the water.  I also really liked the pile of wood waiting to be built into a ship.

He came downstairs and said he had looked through his Lego people and had found some "old looking" ones.  Epaulets?  Check.  Vikings Helmet?  Check.  The cute blond on the left is actually "Thor".  Jake removed his cape since we didn't think it fit the theme too well.  He hadn't done research to see if shipbuilders wore capes.

The Lego people weren't officially added until Wednesday morning.  We wanted to make sure we wouldn't ruin them with the glue gun.  We dabbed a small amount on some extra legs he had upstairs on Tuesday night and let it sit over night and harden.  Wednesday morning when he realized he could scrape the glue without ruining the Lego he glued everything down.

And can I just say - GOD BLESS THE GLUE GUN!!  I don't know who came up with it, but every time we use it for something I fall more in love with it.  I'm not sure we would have been finished with this project even now if we'd been using regular Elmer's Glue.  And it sure beats the smell from the rubber cement we used as kids on a lot of projects!

He was pretty excited with the outcome.  It was due Friday and was finished (minus Legos) by 9:30pm on Tuesday.  So far....knock on wood....we've been doing pretty good on the whole "not waiting until the last minute" for projects this year.  His partner was in charge of building the ship so unfortunately we won't get to see the final project.  Just glad we can check this off the DOCKet.

Hardee har har.