There are other boats which will want to join this toyland fleet. Peanut shells may have very tiny paper sails pinned to the ends. A race between two rival peanut boats will be great fun.
A cigar box boat may have squares cut from the sides with a knife for oar locks; with meat skewer oars, it will make a very creditable scow, flat-bottomed, and perfectly safe for any doll to go clamming in.
Clam shells may have paper sails fastened on with glue, and any kind of flat shell loves to go sailing away by itself on the water.
A strong square of birch bark may be folded and cut rounding at the ends to resemble a canoe. The ends are then sewed with a needle threaded with strands of sweet grass or stout cotton, making a tiny Indian craft. If you wish the canoe to be perfectly water tight, it can be lined with waxed paper.
There will be fun for all summer long for the boy who makes and sails his own fleet of toy boats.
Having a tent out in the garden or on the lawn during the summer vacation makes each long, happy day twice as long, and just twice as happy. A boy can play that he is an Indian, or a first settler, or a cave dweller, or even an old story book king if he has even the crudest kind of a roof over his head and some sort of a play shelter beneath which he can live and play, and dream all manner of delightful things.
Of course the nicest tent of all is one from a real tent factory made of canvas and having staples and pegs to fasten it to the ground, but such a tent costs ever so much money, and not every mother and father can afford to buy it. One family of children went without fireworks on Fourth of July that they might save the money which they would have, otherwise, burned up and with it they bought themselves a tent which lasted much longer than the smoke and noise of the fireworks would have.
There is, though, a very fine tent indeed, and one that will give a group of boys quite as much pleasure as any manufactured one. This is the home-made tent. It is the tent that seems to really belong to you because it is a sort of a makeshift and you make it with your own hands. There are ever so many ways of making your own tent, all of them simple and quite easy for one to follow.