Straw Rockets For The 4th

Hi there, it’s Katrina, aka katrinahunt13, here to share a hybrid project that you can get the kids involved with.  I know we have international pad members, but this coming Tuesday is the United States 4th of July, which means summer party!  Summer parties, usually mean gatherings of kids too!  What I am sharing today is a fun and safe way for the little ones to “shoot” fireworks also.  And bonus, they don’t need to wait until dark and they won’t run out of things to shoot!

I give you Straw Rockets!!!  I will list the supply list below, but chances are you have everything already on hand!  And the digital supplies from The Lilypad store are fun to use this way and can be adapted for any party or activity!  For this project, I used Bella Gypsy’s Rad, White and Blue collection.  So the supplies you will need are a printer and regular printer paper (cardstock is too heavy for this), straws, tape, scissors and to make it easy a paper trimmer (but that’s not a necessity!).

Select some pattern paper that you would want your rockets to be.  I picked four different patterns and just printed on a normal setting on my printer on regular printer/copy paper.

I also printed out some elements that I thought would be fun to use as decorations on the rockets.  It’s also a good way for the kids to tell their rockets apart if they want to have rocket races or games!  You can cut these out now, or have the kids cut them out if they are old enough to use scissors.  You could also use the print and cut feature on your die cutting machine.

Now you will cut the paper to make the rockets.  Cut the 8.5 x 11 inch paper in half down the length of the paper.  This will give you 2 pieces of 4.25 x 11 pieces of paper.  Now you will cut those 4.25 x 2.  So you will make a cut at every two inches going down the length of the 1/2 sheet.  You will end up with pieces like this.

Take each piece and roll it, making sure it will fit easily over the end of your straw.  The goal is you want to be able to blow the “rocket” off easily from the straw!  Once you know about how much to roll, then you can tape the side up.

Here are mine rolled and taped.  PS, ignore the dog hair!  LOL  My furry guy wanted petted and I didn’t realize until I edited the pictures that he had managed to leave his mark!

 

This close up will give you an idea of where we are heading on making the rocket!

Next you will fold one end at an angle, you can tape if you want, and then you will fold the same end from the opposite way to create a point.  Tape down.

Then just add your decorations!  I used Zots by Therm O Web, which are a type of dot adhesive.  I think they lay better than if you were trying to roll up a piece of tape and you don’t have to wait for the glue to dry!  Place them over the ends of your straws and start blowing!  No fire or lighter needed for these!

Have a safe and fun 4th of July!  And don’t forget to take pictures, because you know you want to use all the fun stuff in the Lilypad store to scrap those memories!!!