The kids loved listening to me read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader out loud. We knew most of the characters already, and it was fun going from one island to another each night as we read. We really enjoyed the first two movies, too. However, they did NOT like this movie. Finiasi only watched about 20 minutes of it. Eliam fell asleep. And the girls went to play on the gymnastics equipment in the garage. Everyone has different tastes in movies, but we won’t watch this one again until someone asks for it.
For these parties, I do my best to plan activities that use materials we already have. We already had acrylic paint, and I didn’t want to buy any watercolors. If we do salt painting again, I will make sure to get water colors. The kids still loved the painting, but it did not have the same effect as the water soaking into the salt. Also, we had several boxes of strawberries that a friend gave us. I decided to use those to make strawberry pie to represent decadent food. Feel free to adjust the activities or supplies to things you already have in your house.
Activities:
1. Salt Painting the Ocean – This was to create the sea on which the Dawn Treader sailed.
2. Cupcake Decorating – We decorated cupcakes to look like Aslan.
3. Build a Ship – We used toothpicks and marshmallows to recreate the Dawn Treader
4. Strawberry Pie – We made strawberry pie to represent the meal Lucy had with Coriakin, which was incidentally removed from the movie.
5. Watch the movie on Disney+
Supply List: Card stock, salt, watercolor paint, glue, marshmallows, toothpicks, cupcakes, icing, M&Ms, edible eyes, ingredients for your decadent food (we used strawberries, vanilla, cornstarch, sugar, pie crust)
For the salt painting, I recommend doing the salt and glue part as the first project so that it has time to dry while you do the other activities. We did this part outside so that we didn’t get salt everywhere. After we gave the glue plenty of time to dry, we went back to paint them. I used q-tips for paintbrushes to make clean up easier.
For cupcake decorating, we used M&Ms and these edible eyes I found at the store. The eyes were $5 for the pack, and that’s more than I wuld usually spend on a project like this, but we have been going through a phase where we put googly eyes on all sorts of things, so it fit well into our projects at the moment. They certainly aren’t required, and you could buy whatever type of cupcake decorations you want. I like to use cupcakes because it allows each child to make their own. However, letting everyone work together on a whole cake is another option.
For ship building, I considered buying kits off Amazon so that we could make a proper ship, but again, I try to keep the cost of these nights to a minimum. If you wanted to spend the money to buy those, I’m sure it would be a great activity. We used toothpicks and marshmallows. We have done this type of craft often, so the kids are familiar with the concept of using them to make 3-D shapes. If it’s your children’s first time working with these, you will probably have to provide an example of the possibilities.
For the strawberry pie, I mostly wanted to use the strawberries a friend had given us. My kids usually enjoy helping with kitchen projects where they get to use knives and use the stove. However, by this point in the evening, they wanted to play in their bedroom. It is one of those times where part of me REALLY wants them to do the planned activities but the other part knows it’s better for them to enjoy their evening with one another and with me rather than for me to force things they don’t want to do. I made the pie while they played.
Finally, we watched the movie. As I mentioned in the beginning, they did not enjoy this movie, but we can’t win them all.
