Saturday, May 22, 2010

Tumblewing Surfing, A Scientific Boredom Buster

The strange pile of junk, I have pictured here - a phone book, a scrap piece of cardboard, and a printout from The Science Toymaker, represents our evening entertainment.

We were blessed by another cold, and rainy day. I'm sure once the forest fire season is here, I'll be very grateful for this rainy spring. But, trapped inside with the children today, I was beginning to reach my breaking point. In fact, I was just about to succumb to the urge to run out, and buy another toy, any toy, in the hope of a few minutes of peace, when I remembered to check with the Science Toymaker. He has a great site, that I've mentioned before, full of toy/science projects for children (and their parents) to make. Some are easier, for younger children, and some really take a lot of work.

We decided to try out the air surfing, tumblewing, a mixture of lift, and magic, folded from a phone book page, and flown with a piece of cardboard.

Our folds are not perfect. Our cardboard is not quite big enough for beginners. And, we made all the rookie mistakes, that the "Toymaker" warned us about. But, even so, we experienced just enough success, to make it fun for a solid hour of gliding, falling, laughing, and not being bored. Science is awesome!



And, it's great to be a homeschooler.

4 comments:

  1. Ooooo- fun boredom buster, and GREAT website...which I will promptly bookmark...right now...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Heading over to the website now!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the website, I have it bookmarked. It looks and sounds like the kids had a lot of fun with this activity!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Another great link from you. We also have cold and rainy spring this year - very unusual for us. Our baby lemon tree is not liking it much.

    ReplyDelete

Comments