How to make homework fun.




My wee man is 8 years old just now and lately I've been finding the benefits to both himself and I of helping with his homework.

He brought home a science experiment the other week there and we both set about to complete the project within the specified time limit. Lesson one... Teaching the wee man to respect time limits and try to work to them. Tick VG (Very Good)!

On reflection I could have left him to crack on with it himself as I have done in the past but I thought he might like it better and get more out of it if daddy helped him. Plus I really waned to build a rocket!

The project shall be know as the "Mega Rocket Balloon Project"! 

After much rummaging around I found the Kite String, a straw, a balloon, some sellotape and two suitable anchor points to tie the string onto and keep it tight.  

It stipulated that the string had to be between 10 and 15 feet long!?  I couldn't find the tape measure so I just guessed it! 
Had I asked my wife to guess it I dare say her foot would have been more realistic than mine!

Anyway we put the string through the straw which was to act as the carrage for the rocket and once the string was secured and tightened it acted like a zip wire.

Now the trick bit was to inflate the balloon and attach it using the sellotape to the straw. 
I got Alexander to hold the balloon at the end to stop any air escaping whilst I did this.

We had talked about filming this and putting it on Youtube. 
A} Because it'd serve as a guide for other people wishing to complete this great project.
B} To encourage Alexander to get fully behind this project. 
In my mind it wasn't something to be done halfheartedly.

Anyway I gave him a count down to Launch whilst I filmed and.... the launch failed on the first attempt! Awe!  After a bit of an engineering review we re inflated the balloon and tried again.
We'll you can see the result's on our video...



I really enjoyed doing that project with my kid and I'm pretty sure he loved it too! 

They grow up so fast you know!

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