Today our family made kites.
We used plastic grocery bags, the kind you get when you purchase something at the store. We also used wooden dowels, tape, embroidery thread, and an empty thread spool to make the kites.
First, we drew a half pentagon on the bag, which was folded in half. When we cut it out, the shape of the kite was a pentagon.
After cutting the bags, we measured the dowels to fit our kites. The dowels were placed vertically down the center and horizontally across the widest point of the pentagons. Butterfly had to shorten her dowel, Mom had to shorten her bag, and I didn't need to do anything to make the bag and the dowel the same size.
Then we fastened the dowels to the kite, making sure that everything was taut. When that was done, we tied the thread to the dowels and also at the other end of the kite.
Before we tied the string to the kites, we figured out where it needed to be tied so that the kites would fly properly. If the string is tied wrong, the kite will do a nose dive.
After making the kites, Mom and I decorated ours with stickers because we had used the plain side of our grocery bags. Butterfly had used the printed side, so she didn't need to decorate hers.
We used grocery bags instead of other materials because plastic takes a lot longer to decompose, so we are helping the earth by reusing something that would usually be trash. We even used the scraps left over from the bag to make the tail of the kites.
