Up, Up, and Away

Gage became fascinated with hot air balloons while we were looking for science fair projects. We came across this little dandy, and we made hot air balloons for weeks. We watched videos of them, checked out books from the library, and tried making some of our own.

The dry cleaner bag/poster board/toaster model worked the best. It went up over 30 feet in the cold, still, outside air. Awesome!

Sometimes I get discouraged when homeschooling, but a lot of times my prayers are answered and some amazing events happen to enrich our homeschool experience. For example, on the way to the science fair, we saw a hot air balloon hovering just a few blocks away. Naturally, we went after it! The thing landed right in front of us. We jumped out of the car and watched them pull down the envelope (balloon) and empty it. The pilot hollered "Come help!" so we ran over and helped fold it up and put it in the gigantic bag. The pilot took about 20 minutes showing Gage the inside, telling him how it works, how much fuel he had to lift the 500 lb. balloon, and about the competitions he had been in. He learned more in that hands-on 20 minutes than in the 2 weeks of studying. And it was awesome.