Now that we are splendidly in the midsts of fall, there are more days that we cannot go outside to play.  I can’t say I’m upset about that.  Chasing my rug rats outside everyday gets very tiring.  The downside is that staying inside makes for grumpy restless kids.  Especially after a summer full of outside play every day. 

I’m constantly on the look out for things to keep them happily occupied.  My latest discovery?  Paper airplanes.  So simple, so easy, so fun!  We started just using regular printer paper.  Once I saw how fun the kids thought this was I went ahead and busted out the card stock.  Now, I only know how to make one type of paper airplane, and it honestly didn’t fly too great.  Here is where the internet came in.  A simple search sent me to http://www.10paperairplanes.com/  What a fantastic site!  Each set of directions are easy to follow, and contained little animated pictures so you can’t mess things up.  Not that I messed them up before.  My five year old, ever the learner, got a kick out of theorizing why some planes flew better than others, and how to make them fly even better.  Ironically, adding more glitter seemed to be a popular “better flying” hypothesis.  And what fun it was to test that theory too! 

 This really turned into two different activities.  First gathering our card stock, and letting the kids color and decorate each page to their content.  That lasted a good hour in itself.  Then we folded our planes of choice.  Followed by the flying.  Who’s plane flew the farthest and fastest, who could make it go the highest, etc.  It’s been three days and I’m happy to say that our airplanes are still mostly in tact and flying. 

-Stephanie Wright