Helping your kids to fly!

It doesn't pay to give your kids all the answers. Sometimes they need to figure things out on their own... to come up with their own ideas, to manipulate, to problem solve, to try and fail and to try again.  Activities like these help your kids to develop skills for life, skills to help them "fly" and "flourish" in so many situations in life.

When a child's tower of blocks fall over, helping your child to overcome the frustration can be more difficult that the motor skills needed to build the tower in the first place.  When your child can't figure out how puzzle pieces connect together, helping them with strategies {such as finding the side pieces or looking at how pictures can join to make a whole} is more helpful than giving them the answer. When your child can't organise themselves to get ready for school, helping them to question what they need rather than telling them what is missing is more beneficial in the long term. 

Whilst sending your child off for "free play" to do, play, experiment on their own is important...you can also set up situations where they can apply these skills.  

Here is a simple activity to set up with your school age child. In our house we call them "challenges" {reminiscent of the Lego Challenges we did last year} but you could call it a science experiment if that has a better ring to it with your kids.

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The Challenge: Build something that can fly using any or all of these items. 

• Paper towel
  
• Freezer bag ties
  
• rubber bands
  
• Lego person

You could use other household items too - try a plastic freezer bag, pencil, matchsticks...

You will also need a height to drop your creation. We have an internal stairwell.

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Miss 8 and I experimented with several strategies to help Lego person to fly {essentially building a parachute}.  We looked at want could slow down the fall, what makes it fast, what makes it spin, how we could make it lighter, the affect of adding holes, ...etc. We talked about surface area, gravity and air resistance... Mr 4.5 wanted to help too and loved dropping the creations down the stairs.

I won't tell you what worked for us as that is not the point! Try this activity with your kids and see what they come up with!

I would love to see your creations! Send a photo to [email protected]

How do you help your kids to fly?

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