Parachutes

Materials

• Unbleached muslin fabric, cut into 8” (20 cm) circles
• Fabric markers or crayons
• Yarn or thin string, cut into 18” (45 cm) pieces, 4 pieces for each parachute
• Large-eyed needles
• Empty thread spools (may be purchased from craft supply catalogs or stores)

Instructions

1. The children use the markers or crayons to decorate their circles of muslin.
2. Thread a piece of string or yarn through a needle. You will need to tie a piece of the string at four places on the muslin circle, equidistant all the way around the circle. Tie the strings to the muslin as close to the ends as possible.
3. Gather the four strings together and feed them through the center of a spool. Tie a knot at the end. Your parachutes are now ready to fly.
4. Have the children speculate about what will happen when they take their parachutes outside and toss them into the air.
5. Go outside and launch them by throwing them into the air. It helps if it is a breezy day. Explain to them that the material is catching the air, holding the parachutes up, then allowing them to drift gently down. (Make sure the children give each other some space so that no one gets hit by a parachute.)
6. You could have races to see which parachute goes the farthest or floats the longest.

More to do

• Language: Have the children dictate a sentence about their parachute-flying experience. Sentences can be written on a chart story tablet and read by the whole class, or each child's sentence could be put on a separate piece of paper that she could then illustrate. Bind these pages together and give the collection a title, such as Our High Flying Adventure. Keep the book available in your classroom library.