The Cincinnati Junior Makers group started as a bunch of bike riding fathers with young kids. The group used to go on rides hauling their cherubs around on bike trailers and tagalongs. Now the kids are old enough to ride on their own, but not quite up for the challenge of traffic. Since they like each others’ company and are raising clever kids, they have turned to Make to help provide some worthwhile activities.
Brad Writes:
Our group – the Cincinnati Jr Makers, got together and made the air rockets detailed in Make 15 makezine.com/15/airrocket/ . These are really easy to build. Literally some paper and tape. I had put the launcher together that morning. It is basically a battery operated spud gun with a big impressive detonator type button to launch. We used a battery from my son’s min-jeep but a drill battery should work fine too. Total project cost was around $60.
We spent a few hours making and decorating the rockets. Then off to the local park to launch. These were simply AMAZING! A friend who is also in the club had made 2L water rockets last year – he brought his setup as well and we had a rocketfest! My wife is taking the video – you can see from her response at the launch how successful this was (I am the guy in the black Make t-shirt). We spent maybe 2-3 hours launching, repairing, and modifying the rockets. Who knew that simple fin modifications could be so impactful. This one was so successful that I have done it 3 times since with people who missed the first session.
You can check out the article in Make 15, or try these links to the digital pages. First – Second Third – Fourth – Fifth – Sixth
Would you like to use Make as a resource for organizing activities and project with students and kids? If you do, take some pictures and video, add them to the Make Flickr pool. If you have a set of pictures, add some text explaining what you did to the set description.
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