Tag Archive | stuart j murphy

Kites and the Wind

Well what to do in April when the weather simply will not accommodate but dream of flying kites and educate the kids on proper tornado safety. Amazingly enough this lined up perfectly with a surprise tornado warning siren that was done during extreme weather education week and that we did NOT know about in advance. So we got to experience first hand going into our sub basement and discussing how to stay safe there until the all clear was given!

We used our scout book and their very timely arrow points to make a grand total of THREE different kites – diamond, sled and barn door. Yup we even looked those up and found more single string kites to do topic cards to put on our poster. We were on the ball! And to top it off, we also bought a brand new (and very decently priced) TURTLE kite from Sam’s Club. Now for a good day with a nice wind to trial fly them all. You can find the actual instructions we used for our diamond kites HERE. The scout book was a bit too vague.

Of course we also did a whole mini unit on tornadoes, being as we are in an area where they do occur. You can find our tornado lapbook HERE.

Of course we had a list of links we used…

  • Facts thanks to Kids Kites HERE.
  • MyBestKite.com has amazing history and individual kite information resources HERE.
  • KiteMan has a great LONG list of interesting kite facts about kites and history around the world HERE

And books…

  • The Kite That Bridged Two Nations by Alexis O’Neill based on a true story about the bridge across Niagara from the US to Canada HERE.
  • The Story of Kites by Ying Chang Compestine HERE.
  • Let’s Fly a Kite by Stuart J. Murphy where we even got a chance to deal with symmetry HERE.
  • I Face the Wind by Vicki Cobb HERE.

We did borrow a nice line up of wind and tornado related books and used most… I will include all of what we borrowed used or not…

  • What Makes a Good Tornado Twist? by Mary Kay Carson HERE.
  • The Wind by Craig Hammersmith HERE.
  • Wind Power by Kathy Allen HERE.
  • The Magic Schoolbus Presents Wild Weather the Nonfiction Companion HERE.
  • It’s a Disaster! Tornado by Jessica Rudolph HERE.
  • Fueling the Future Wind Energy by Elizabeth Raum HERE.
  • Tornado! by Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin HERE.
  • World of Weather by David Adler HERE.

And video of course…

  • The Magic Schoolbus Takes Flight HERE

Hopefully these items will help out in case of wind and kite interest!!IMAG2169

This entry was posted on 17/09/2015, in Uncategorized. 1 Comment