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Go Fly a Kite! (Show 1303)
Well, we sure had fun flying our homemade kites! You can make a kite of your very own, from simple materials found around the house. Here's how...
You'll need:
* thin paper cut to 3 feet by 2.5 feet (newspaper, tissue paper, even material from certain shopping bags will work)
* 2 thin sticks (like bamboo, balsa or dowels)
* string
* scissors
* glue
* tape
To make your kite, first construct the frame from the two sticks or dowels. To make a nice, traditional kite shape, one stick should be twice the length of the other stick. Cross the sticks, and tie them together (in an "X" shape) with string at the center (the cross part). Then run some string along the outside edges, to create a diamond kite shape. For this step, you may want to (with adult supervision), make a tiny notch at the ends of the sticks, to keep the string in place.
Place the paper on your work surface, nicer side (if there *is* a nicer side) down. Then place the kite frame on top of the paper. Trim the paper around the frame so the paper is about 1.5 inches wider than the kite, the whole way around. Using two small pieces of tape, tape the frame to the paper in two places along the stick/dowel that is closest to the paper.
Working all the way around the kite, fold the excess 1.5" of the paper over the string frame, and glue it down. While this is drying, you can make a tail out of a length of string that is twice as long as the kite. Now you're almost done, so hang in there!
Tie two short pieces of string to the longest stick/dowel of the frame, both above the cross and below it. Then tie the two ends together, and then to a ball of string. Have a great time flying your kite on a breezy day! |
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