My kids love airplanes but every time we try to make standard paper airplanes they end in a nose dive. So we tried out a bunch, and here are three “paper” airplane activities you can’t mess up.
Straw & Paper Planes
- Cardstock (or scrapbook paper)
- Non-bendable straws
- Tape
First cut paper into two different sized strips – 10” and 5” long and 1 ½” wide. Then, you just loop it around until the ends meet and secure it with tape on either side of the straw. That’s it! You’re ready to fly! They don’t look like they would work, but they do actually get air…depending on how you throw it! You can do multiple shapes like triangles and squares but we found the circles worked the best.
Zip Line Airplanes
- Empty toilet paper roll
- Quarter
- Smooth ribbon
- Scrapbook or construction paper
- Tape
This one is my favorite because they fly no matter what! Cover up the toilet paper roll with the scrapbook paper and then cut two triangles out of paper for the wings. Tape a quarter inside the paper roll so it doesn’t flip over. Thread the ribbon through the airplane and then attach it to two different sides of the room and let it rip! The kids really enjoyed this. As we were doing it we thought it’d be fun to transport people so we attached a little jewelry box at the bottom which they loved too! Make sure you clean up afterward or you will most definitely trip on this in the middle of the night–learned this the hard way.
Egg Carton Gliders
Materials
First, draw the shape of an airplane onto an egg container using the sides of the container. Cut the airplane out and let the kids paint–it does not have to be perfect! Next, just tape a coin to it for a weight and you are ready! We went out to the play structure to get some height. Some bloopers happened, coins fell, airplanes went twirling to the ground, but the kids did not even mind! I hope you give these a try and your kids love them as much as mine!
