Building a Longship – Cardboard Engineering (part 1 of 3)

To recap-  a boy who lived across the road from my parents was helping me develop the main character for the book. This boy, Nick, seemed very much like the main character of Josh (Knut)- both are very inventive and creative boys, with vivid imaginations. For research purposes (and for fun), Nick, his dad Roy and I set about building a Viking longship out of a cardboard fridge box.

Step 1.

We laid the cardboard out flat and ruled a line straight down the middle- we’d be building two identical sides for our ship, so we would need to divide the cardboard in half.

Step 2.

We drew the outline of the boat onto one half of the cardboard, making one half of a ship.

Step 3.

We cut out the half-a-ship.

Step 4.

We tested the half-a-ship: it seemed good enough.

Step 5.

We used the half-a-ship as a stencil, tracing around it on the second half of the cardboard. Then we cut out the second half-a-ship. This gave us two identical sides for our ship.

Step 6.

We used the left-over cardboard to make shields, to go along the sides of our ship.

And, that’s the end of part 1.

Join us next week for part two of Building a Longship, where we spray-paint the ship and the shields 🙂