Being in social isolation with a toddler is incredibly challenging, and I have no doubt other parents with young children at home are going through the same. It forces us to be a little extra creative and resourceful. I feel incredibly fortunate for our backyard space during this time.

With all the rain we’ve had lately, the small stream in our backyard (mostly for water runoff) has been flowing swiftly. My son Ellis and I have been spending a lot of time playing in and near the water on warmer days, clearing the waterway of debris and moving rocks around.

One afternoon, while he was napping, I built these little bark boats with leaf sails out of materials I had around my studio. And when he woke from his nap, we sailed them!

Assuming the boats would ultimately be lost, I didn’t want to use anything that wasn’t natural in constructing them. I drilled small holes into the bark in order to hold a twig in place and created sails from dried leaves by threading them onto the twigs.

A few minutes of construction time and I had a small fleet of small bark boats to sail with Ellis! Check out this short video of our launch below.
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