Paper Airplane Competition

For Father’s Day, I took the suggestion of a fellow blogger at Modern Kids Messy Parents and ordered my husband the book “Handy Dad” by Todd Davis. I’m not sure who spent more time oohing and awing over the projects in its pages: my oldest son or his father.

Last weekend, they embarked on the first of the book’s projects: a paper airplane. Ever since, my son has been fascinated. He even asked me if one of our activities could be paper airplanes. Who am I to say no?

I found an amazing website that provided great free written and animated instructions to make 10 airplanes (check out 10paperairplanes.com). With a little help from me, my son made five of the planes – the arrow, dart, stealth (in progress pictured below), moth, and kite.

I had some scrapbooking papers lying around, so we used those. After each was made, he labeled the planes with their names and listed them in his notebook. When all five were done, I taped a ruler to the ground (the starting line) and he flew them.

The competition was fierce to see which would fly the farthest. Some of the planes that looked the fastest weren’t. Others curved and swooped. It was like having a front-row seat at our own private air show!

I gave him a measuring tape so he could measure the distance each flew and record the number (in inches) next to the plane’s name in his notebook. Once the competition was over, I asked him to figure out how the planes had placed.

I asked questions like, “Is it a good thing if the plane flew a little ways or a long ways? Would the number be big or small if it flew a long ways? Which number is the biggest?” He wrote the numbers one through five next to the plane’s name to indicate who’d placed first, second, third, etc. And then he played with his new planes for a solid 30 minutes before a growling stomach distracted him.

Next time it’s raining and you just can’t listen to another “Moooommmm, I’m SO bored,” grab some paper and help your child make paper airplanes!

Studying (and Making) Our Own Skeleton

The human body is so cool. To kick off some lessons related to our anatomy, I thought we’d read up on bones. Our first book was “Bones” by Stephen Krensky. Even though it’s a step 2 Step Into Reading book, I read it to my son. This non-fiction book talked about bones at my son’s level and I was thrilled to have found it at our local library.

Afterwards, I gave my son a skeleton puzzle. (Well, that’s what I called it, anyway.) I downloaded these great bone cut-outs from The Crafty Crow website, then printed, cut out, and punched holes in them. All that was left to do was assemble. My son was up to the challenge.

Right away, he grabbed the skull and ribs (I reminded him what these bones were called) and he taped them together. Then he attached the pelvis with one of the brads I’d set out.

Now, he was stumped. Then I reminded him of what we’d learned in Krensky’s book: that the longest bones in our body are in our legs! That was just the hint he needed to push on. It wasn’t long before the whole skeleton was assembled.

When he asked me why we were using brads instead of tape to connect the bones, I reminded him about joints and showed him how we’d walk if we couldn’t bend our knees.

After our skeleton was complete, my son read Jo Cleland’s non-fiction book, “Why Do I Have Bones?” The repetitive phrases and simple words made this book ideal for my almost-six-year-old son to read on his own.

To wrap up our lesson on bones, we watched “The Skeleton Dance” on YouTube.

I wonder how long I’ll have “Dem Bones, dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones …” stuck in my head!

This is a great activity for young learners and the books we used were instrumental and age-appropriate for kindergarteners or first graders. They helped teach my son lots of fun facts about the human skeleton. A few hours after we'd completed the activity, I overheard my son tell his younger brother, "If we didn't have bones, we'd be blobs." HA!

Make your own skeleton by downloading Kate from Mini-Eco’s skeleton parts on The Crafty Crow here.

Slide-A-Story

The Star Wars Story Dice activity was such a hit with my son that I figured it was time to create a new story starter activity to get him writing more. I designed the Slide-A-Story activity and manipulated one of two dice to read either “UP” or “DOWN.”

The Slide-A-Story board contains four questions: who, what, when, and where. Pull tabs are threaded through the board, each with 12 different answers.

Give your son or daughter some blank handwriting paper or print some from DonnaYoung.com. Hand over the dice and get ready for a silly story to unfold.

Your child will roll the two dice four times. If the die read “UP” and “4” the child moves the tab up four times to reveal a person, thing, time, or place. Each of these answers will be incorporated into the story.

My son rolled “Astronaut,” “Tractor,” “Bed time,” and “At a museum.” What was almost more fun than creating the story was discussing the why and how behind the answers he’d ended up with (e.g. why would an astronaut be riding a tractor? How did he get in the museum? What was he doing there?).

Make Your Own
Download and print the UP/DOWN page onto sticker paper to manipulate one of your dice. The Slide-A-Story board and slides are available for download as well. Simply print on cardstock, glue to a thicker piece of paper for added sturdiness (I used a colored file folder), use an Exacto knife to cut the slits for the slides, and thread them through.

Want to make your own Slide-A-Story board and slides? A blank Slide-A-Story board is available for download (perhaps your child would love to decorate this themselves) and empty slide templates can be downloaded, too. Simply click on the red text.

Let’s Go Fishing (Snacktime Subtraction)

What can you make with colored Goldfish crackers, peanut butter, and pretzels sticks? A snack AND a math game, that’s what.

First I had my son cut out a pond from blue construction paper. Then I gave him a small bowl of colored Goldfish crackers and asked him to put some fish in his lake.

Then he started reading and answering questions on a custom-made worksheet, counting the total number of fish in the pond, as well as the number of red, orange, yellow, and green fish.

Then the real fun began.

Dowload this worksheet here.

I asked my son to dip his fishing rod (a pretzel stick) in peanut butter and "catch" the number of fish specified in the next question. After these fish were caught, how many remained in the pond? What about after you throw some back in?

This was the yummiest math activity we’ve ever done. I know this because my son said, “I like to eat the fishing poles, Mom.” HA!

Wondering what to do with all those leftover pretzels? Have your child make pretzel letters!

How to Make a Rainstick

If you’re teaching your son/daughter about rain or the rainforest, making a rain stick is a great craft to complement the lesson.

I’d seen this project ages ago and thought it would be fun but my son’s fine motor skills simply weren’t up to the task. Now that he’s older, I figured we’d give it a go. I’m glad I did.

What you need:

A bare paper towel tube

40-50 wooden toothpicks

School glue

Posterboard or heavy construction paper (trace the opening and cut 2 circles ¼ bigger than the tube; make several snips all around the circle from the outer edge in to the traced line)

1-2 tbsp. of rice, lentils, or other small beans

Push pin

Hot glue gun

Paint/markers

Nippers or cutters to cut off the toothpick ends

Directions:

Use a push pin to make holes in the paper towel tube about a ¼-inch apart. I used the seams on the paper towel tube as a guide and added another row of holes between these seams. Then I gave my son the box of toothpicks to feed through one hole and out a hole on the other side. You’ll end up with a downward spiral of toothpicks on the inside of your tube.

If your rainstick looks something like a medieval torture device, you’re on the right track. Once about 40-50 toothpicks are stuck in the tube, put a dot of school glue on each of the holes where the toothpicks are sticking out (this will prevent the toothpicks from falling out).

When the glue dries, snip off the ends of the toothpicks (be careful, they could go flying). Run a bead of hot glue around one of the ends and fold down the flaps you cut on one of the posterboard circles until the end of the tube is capped.

Have your child measure the beans/rice/lentils and pour into the tube. Hot glue the other circle of posterboard around the open end. Give your child paints, markers, or strips of paper to glue over the tube to decorate it. Now, slowly turn the rainstick and listen to the sound of falling rain!

I practically had to beg my son to decorate his rainstick. All he wanted to do was play with it!

After we were done with this craft we read two great books about rainforests: “Amazon River Rescue,” an Adventures of Riley book by Amanda Lumry and Bonnie Worth’s “If I Ran the Rainforest” from the Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library.

To read the original directions for this activity, visit FreeKidsCrafts.com.