Take Flight: Ring Glider and Stunt Pilot Races

This month's Cub Scout theme is Take Flight.  This week we focused on airplanes because that's the first thing I think of when flight is mentioned.  First we made these very simple and fun ring gliders. 

The supplies are simple:

• a strip of ordinary (recycled) copy paper, 7" long and 1" wide
• another strip that is 10" long and 1" wide
• an ordinary drinking straw.  I think the ones that don't bend work  better.  

We taped the stripes into loops and taped them onto the straw. They flew surprisingly well, not too much distance, but they floated through the air better than some of my lame attempts at paper airplanes.

To get the boys moving, we had a Stunt Pilot Race.  The boys were in teams of three, with their elbows linked together, the center boy facing forward and the outer boys facing backward.  They raced to a line at the end of the driveway, then changed direction without turning around and raced back to the start.  I wish I would have taken better advantage of the lesson in teamwork!  This race would be a safer on a grassy surface to cushion any crash landings.