Day nine: pinecone parachute

I have no idea what I was expecting a parachute on a pinecone to do but the result was not as extraordinary as I had hoped.  I think maybe I forgot exactly what a parachute was suppose to do or something; in my mind this pinecone was suppose to fly across the yard and not just float slowly to the ground.

It works very well for a parachute and actually entertained a two year old. 

The directions that I was following said you could paint the parachute, decorate with stickers or glitter.  I didn't have any paint that I thought would stick very well to a plastic bag and we were short on time this morning so we kept ours plain.  Would be much more fun if the parachute was cute I think!

We showed off our creation to dad when he got home so we were able to get some pictures. 

In the first one we are testing to see which will go faster the pinecone without the parachute or the one with.  My pinecone "won".

 

The second picture is out of focus but you can really see that piggly wiggly parachute in action! 

Sam loves her parachute so I am sure we will be playing with it again and I may even let her decorate it!  But if we make another one I think I will use a bigger pinecone and better string.  I used regular sewing thread and it got tangled very easily and was a HUGE pain to untangle.  Not sure what would work better but sewing thread was not the best.  If you try this out make sure that the bag doesn't have any holes in it and maybe with older kids you could test out different types and sizes of bags; bread bag v. grocery bag.

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The Nitty Gritty!

I got this idea from Arty Facts; Plants and Art Activities by Crabtree Publishing.  I just took a plastic grocery bag, cut off the handles and then used a needle to thread the string through the bag.  I tied four strings of equal length to the pinecone.  I couldn't figure out how to tie them so the pincone stood upright but it worked okay kind of laying over on its side.  Not sure what kind of paint would work best, I am not a crafty person, but stickers would work very well.  The comparison of the two pinecones was also a big hit and I think would be even neater for older kids because they might understand a bit better what is happening.

Comments

[gina]

This is a cute idea! Sadly, I don't know that we have pinecones anywhere in sight!

[amber]

I love this! Brianna would really enjoy this I think however, we have no place to drop them from. :( we might have to try this out and take it on the road!