Students engineer flights of fancy
The Seattle Times
May 27, 2006 Saturday
Fourth Edition
Bothell school uses kites to help science, social studies make sense
Kayla Webley
Seattle Times Eastside bureau
Eight-year-old Shelby Pegel was disappointed. Her camo-patterned shirt was in the wash so she couldn’t wear it to school. Her friend also forgot to bring the camo-patterned pants that would have completed the outfit.
The second-grader’s camouflage outfit would have matched her green butterfly kite perfectly, she said. “I wanted to make my kite the best,” she said.
Dozens of colorful kites filled the sky at Lockwood Elementary School in Bothell on Friday, part of a new partnership between the school and the Drachen Foundation, an organization dedicated to increasing knowledge about kites.
Each grade integrated kite-making into science and social-studies units, giving students a hands-on learning experience.
First-graders made bug kites, second-graders crafted butterflies, third-graders created Japanese fish, fourth-graders salmon kites, fifth-graders made box kites and sixth-graders designed tetrahedral kites.
Lockwood received a grant from the King County Arts Commission to expand the program next year. The money will allow the school to build kites in every classroom, hire an artist to assist in the process and plan a field trip to the Bellevue Arts Museum’s kite exhibit next spring.
For the second-grade butterfly study, each child watched his or her caterpillar make the transformation into a butterfly, then the students released the butterflies into the wild.
“The kids are totally excited throughout the whole process. They would run into the classroom every day to see what happened,” said second-grade teacher Mary Shanahan. “It makes the science unit more meaningful for them to have experience of making the kite and simulating the butterflies flying.”
Eight-year old Anna Sabin labeled her butterfly kite Fire and Water.
The right-hand “fire” side glowed with red, orange and yellow designs, contrasting with the left-hand “water” side with its purple, green and blue blocks of color.
She yelled, “Fly like the wind, fly, baby, fly,” as she took off running across the playfield holding her colorful creation as it took flight.
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