Paper Airplanes

 In order to really nail down the words of the week this week, the Pine kids the chance to play with the wind tunnel this afternoon. We have been working on "up" and "down" so this was a perfect activity to test our knowledge. The kids put in a bunch of different kinds of paper to watch go up and then gently float down. 

"Um can we make a paper airplane?" L asked as he handed me some well used tissue paper. 

After a quick fold, L put the paper airplane and watched it launch out with the power of the fan. It came out no problem! Unfortunately after a few tries the tissue paper did not hold the shape of an airplane. 

"It's not working anymore. We need different paper!"

L ran to the basket full of paper and picked out a heavier weighted paper and once again asked if he could have a paper airplane. 

L placed the newly created airplane into the tunnel. He waited in anticipation as it slowly made its way up the tube. But, it got stuck... 

"Hey! It's not moving. It's not coming out!"

It was stuck, but nobody seemed to be able to figure out why. Instead, L went back to the drawing board and grabbed a lighter weighted paper. 

 "Okay, this will work!"

Unfortunately, there wasn't any real consistency in the airplanes flying. No matter how big or small, light or heavy the planes were we couldn't find the right kind of paper to fly out every time. 

The group was frustrated. 

"Can we take them outside?" 

While outside the group tried a number of ways to make the planes fly. Sometimes they just flew them around by hand, but then F had an idea! As you can see from the video below all three boys tried the same strategy to make the airplanes launch into the air. 

Unfortunately for them, the wind was a big factor and only contributed to their frustrations.

"The wind keeps blowing it away!"
"I don't like the wind!"
"It needs to stop so it will work!"

Sometimes things are out of our control, but yet we are still frustrated by them. The boys thought that if they were able to change the environment then they would be able to make their airplanes fly. Today that wasn't the case. We shall keep trying tomorrow!