Flying High!

Last week we started Amanda Bennett’s History of Flight unit study.  

One of the weblinks in the study shows you how to make a large hot air balloon out of tissue paper.  I decided that we’d give it a whirl because I knew both boys would go crazy over it! 

Just so you know, this is involved (but worth it!).

Here are parts of our process.

Jason making the pattern.

Simon "helping" with the pattern. 

 

Elijah working on making the panels (six total).  The original instructions call for 2- 20 x 30 inch pieces of tissue paper for each panel.  I   could only find 20 x 20 inch pieces, so we had to use THREE pieces of tissue for each panel (making the 60 inches).

Six panels complete!

The six panels are stacked and the pattern gets pinned down.  Then you cut around the pattern.  I did this for Elijah.   Actually, Jason and I took over from this point on as it gets somewhat complicated. 

After lots of glue sticking, we have a balloon! 

 

You can’t just hold the balloon like this; it took two of us to get it going (Jason held it up high by holding the loop on the top with a long stick).   Once it was mostly inflated, though, I got to back up and snap a picture. 

We did three launches and we were able to retrieve the balloon each time.  We hope to find a field to fly it in so we don’t have to worry about power lines or trees. 

The rest of the pictures are self-explanatory!