flying high with the garage creative!

Today was the first day we had three classes with 20 students ranging in age from preschool to fourth grade. It was all smiles as we made high flying contraptions! Here is what and how we did it so you can do to!

We have all made paper airplanes at one point in our life but how about paper helicopters? I have done this so many times with so many different ages of kids with the same result; it's a good time. You only need paper, scissors, and a pen. I like to have markers, paperclips, and single hole punches on hand to mix it up.

Simply draw a rectangle on a piece of paper with dotted lines as seen in the first figure. Fold the rotors down and opposite while folding and making the handle. It is important to fold the rotors back up a little bit before you drop the helicopter, otherwise it will not rotate as smoothly. I like to encourage kids to color, add weight, fold/ cut the rotors differently, punch holes in the rotors, anything to change the flight a little. And of course, the higher you can get for the drop, the better!

  


When we finished experimenting with paper helicopters, we moved to Magnus gliders. Gather 6 rubber bands, two styrofoam cups, and tape (I like duct tape the best). Tape the cups together as in the picture below and make a long chain with the rubber bands.

Find some stairs and release!

Wrap rubber band chain around cups

Once you have built your Magnus Glider, wrap the chain of rubber bands in the middle of the two cups until there is a small amount of rubber band left. Find a nice high location and release your cups! They should float down slowly rotating. When winding the rubber bands around the cups, be sure not to do it too tightly, otherwise you could hurt your cups. It does take some practice to launch the cups but once you do it successfully, you will not want to stop! To change things up a little with this, I like to add holes in the edge of the cups, add paperclips to the edges of the cups to see how that effects the flight, and of course, decorating your cups!

To finish our day we made hover crafts! These are a little more difficult but definitely worth it. You need an old CD, balloon, hot glue and hot glue gun, and finally a pop top to Gatorade or dish soap (these can be a little tricky to find, I really like Gatorade tops because you can twist them as opposed to pulling them up and separating the seal from the cap to the CD). 

Hot glue the top onto the middle of the CD so air can escape out of the bottom of the CD. Put your balloon on the top the drink top, blow up your balloon through the hole in your CD. Close the drink top, set on the ground and lift the top so air will escape from the bottom. Your hover craft will move around on the ground in a way that is very reminiscent to the puck in air hockey. 

Blowing up the balloon

Hovering away!

I hope you are able to do some of these, they really are fun and if you do, please share your results!

Happy flying!

The Garage Creative