Explorers (Part 1)–Vikingslife magazine photographs

In order to get to the Aztecs & Westward Expansion before our road trip(s) we started at the beginning of America – Early Explorers. I had been planning this unit ever since we built our shed this summer & had a HUGE box leftover. I quickly claimed the box & made us store it in the garage until now.
So here is what we did:
- Sword from cardboard & foil
- Viking helmet (We were planning to make one by putting gold wrapping paper around bowl, but we found we had one in the dress-up clothes! It sells on Amazon with free shipping for $4.88), round shield from (pizza) box & foil

- {FREE} Explorers Lapbook with key point cards & worksheets. (I will be making this free printable, along with some

fun worksheets, for each of the explorers we study.) I am making the lapbook into a timeline – here is our lapbook with our first Explorer.

- Made a Viking ship - We used our box to create, as close as we could, a kid-size replica of a Viking ship. It was fun to make over Christmas break when Daddy was around to help us too!

We left our ship brown as the ships were made of wood (We left out the animal fat to make the space between the wood water resistant =-)
We made it the shape which allowed the Vikings to have the fastest ships of their time.
We put in retractable oars, just like the Vikings for when the weather was bad.
We lined the sides with shields like Vikings did for additional protection and storage for their fitting shields.
We put a dragon on the front of our ship to scare away the towns we went to pillage – Vikings usually had dragons or snakes.
The kids sat on a trunk that held their belongings for the journey (change of clothes, food, and bucket to hold drinking water or bail out water from the ship.
We had the ruder at the back for the helmsman to steer the ship away from rocks or icebergs. Pretty cool, huh?

-Colored in the Viking pictures from the Exploration of North American Coloring Book (This steal for $3.95 and free shipping includes coloring pages & information for 39 North American explorers)

- Activity: We rowed from Greenland to America just like Leif Erikson, ate grapes & call it Vineland (although the Vikings really found blueberries, but they thought they were grapes), and then eager to take home wood & grapes we rowed back to Greenland.

- Watch Veggie Tales: Lyle the Kindly Viking Then we practiced pillaging other lands like the Viking Pirates did. We would arrive at dawn,

yell as we got off our boat, take supplies, burn the buildings (no we didn’t really do that part), and got back in our boat and sailed for home.

Did you know they were so feared the King of France gave the Vikings Normandy so they wouldn’t pillage any of the rest of France?

- Mapping activity: find key countries on a map: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Greenland (Erik the Red) , North America (Leif Eriksson), and Normandy France. This is in my lapbook pack above.

- After reading Leif Eriksson we wrote down key points in the story. Then Goofy ordered them – 1st, 2nd, Next, Then, Finally.

- Used Explorers Calendar Connection from 1+1+1=1 (using all month to highlight various explorers) – If you have the same calendar I do (Learning Resources) just print them at 90% of the size in print options.

- Viking Maze (Goofy had fun with this. Click to get your own)

- Made Viking Mask (click to go to template we used)

- Made Viking Recipes (I always enjoy cooking food from other countries!)
- Viking Information for kids online
- Videos about Vikings (boats, cities, and more)
- Read LOTS of good books!! Below are my favorites – we read each and every one from our local library and we own: the exact Viking hat, cute Veggies Tales video, and Exploration of North America Coloring book (great resource to use with all of our exploration unit!)

And if you have little ones make sure you check out my {FREE} Early Explorers Preschool Pack so your little one can join in on the fun too!