Windy Day Activity – Making a Kite in Two Minutes That Young Children Can Fly

We had a very interesting and fun packed day today at pre-school. After watching a clip of Winnie the Pooh and the blustery day, the children decided that they wanted to make a kite and fly it outside.

It was very windy outside so we were presented with the ideal kite flying conditions. But how do you make a credible kite that will do the job for a bunch of 3 and 4 year old children?

The answer was so simple. I had a stash of plastic carrier bags and some string. I talked about the dangers of playing with plastic bags and the fact that they should never put them on their heads. I also warned them that we were going to make kites but they would only be allowed to fly them with an adult present. The activity was very closely supervised.

I helped and supervised the children as they cut up string of varying lengths. Some of the children could do this without much help whilst others needed more input.

The children chose a carrier bag – I had all sizes and colours with the strength of plastic varying from thick to quite flimsy. It was very exciting as they talked about whose bag may be the best kite.

The string was then tied to each carrier bag handle. This was a little trickier but the children enjoyed the challenge as they were so motivated.

Some children decided that they would share a bag kite and talked about how they were going to hold a piece of string each and that they would need to hold it very tightly to make sure that it didn’t blow away.

We wrapped up warm with our coats, hats and gloves before venturing out to fly our kites.

The result of the activity was amazing! All of the children had so much fun as the wind whisked their bag kites up into the sky. The strength of the wind surprised them and they were squealing with delight. The activity lasted over an hour and when t was time to come back inside the classroom, they pleaded that we could do the same thing again tomorrow.

The discussion that we had afterwards was equally amazing and the knowledge the children had gained through the experience is I am sure, unforgettable.