Making cents at home: Up up and away!

I have to share this activity, I saw it in a magazine and just knew it was written with my boys in mind.

If you want to see the original article, it's in the latest Donna Hay kids magazine, which also has many other things in it worth drooling over. In fact, I no longer have a subscription to Donna Hay mag (which I was gifted by a good friend) but I may just have to order this issue specially.

We all know kids want to fly, don't we?

I'm sure it's not just mine, fairy wings and super hero capes lurk in many a dress-up box.

Well, check THIS one out:

The Coolest Rocket Pack In The Whole World

(and maybe in the whole Universe too)

Very easy to make, let me run you through it.

You will need:

2 x soft drink type bottles

(don't drink the stuff yourself, it's rotten for your health! Scrounge them from someone else, as I did ;)

mirrored cardboard

(I bought mine at a major office supplies store but really, any large sheet of cardboard will do, it does not need to be mirrored)

masking or gaffa tape

crepe paper

elastic

(for shoulder straps)

sticky tape

Trim your cardboard so that when you wrap it round your bottle, it will come past the bottom of the bottle.

Wrap it round the bottle, leaving the cap end of the bottle sticking out slightly.

Like so.

Fasten the card to the bottle with double-sided tape.

Or with whatever you have, we tried the glue gun but found that regular tape folded back over itself to make double sided tape worked better.

Now, lay out a decent sized length of gaffa or masking tape, sticky side up. Or any other wide sticky tape.

Cut differing lengths of yellow/orange/red and blue (blue for super speed!) crepe paper and fix end of each piece of crepe paper to the tape.

Like this.

Now roll the tape around the cap end of your bottle.

Then you have this.

(Mr 2 takes modelling very seriously)

Now do the other bottle in the same fashion, and fix the two together, side by side.

Regular sticky tape was good for this.

Lastly, attach some thinnish elastic at the top of each silver tube and attach the other end of the elastic to the bottom of the silver tube. We used staples for this.

This makes the straps for holding the rocket on the back of the Rocketeer.

You can see the straps here.

Then, go outside and take off!

If you like, you can go for the stream lined model, as per Mr 5.

So fast, you can't even see the flames!

And when your little Rocketeers are tired out and tucked up in their beds, you might even sneak in to give them a kiss and find this. I'm sure I didn't tuck him in with his rocket pack on...

(Just so you know, they don't sleep with the light on, I was able to turn it on and they didn't even stir)