Ultimate Summer: Catch Me if You Can

We are saying “goodbye” to summer with our last weekly theme: things that fly. Just when I think I’ve got a solid concept on time duration, it gets faster on me. Now I’ve got a five year old going into pre-k and that’s simply not fair and…

 I’m going to stop before I get ramble and weepy.

Take a Trip

 “Okay, what’s the surprise?” 

We pull up to the park close to our house and hand Ollie the remote. I hope I actually charged everything right and I’m not missing any part.

“We are going to fly your drone!”

Ollie runs out to the open field and as I set Harper down. Aaron and I get out my phone to look at the instructions when we hear a bzzz. 

It goes incredibly high up in the air and then CRASH! It plummets to the ground. Incredibly, it still works. Ollie takes it up toward the sun. Trying to follow it we say “it’s the plane! No, that’s a bird… and it’s gone.”

Literally less than a minute of playing with the plane, we can not find it anywhere. We are looking in all the trees, all the roofs of the houses. It’s gone.

Ollie, in true form said “well I made a mistake” in such a matter-of fact way.

With one last Hail Mary, we get in our van and finally find it a street over. Ollie is happy piloting his drone a little closer to the ground and Harper is happy walking in the field and warrior-yelling “apple juice!” (That’s how she says ‘Harper June.’)

Craft

I found this wind-up helicopter craft from  The Dad Lab. 

No matter how diligent we were with following the directions, our helicopter couldn’t get past the wind-up step. I might revisit it, but I’ve tried the craft twice…and a couple troubleshooting ideas. My motivation only goes so far with paper cup helicopters and a lack of an engineering degree. 

Water play

How to play this game:

1. Ask Ollie to find his water gun. Tell him that doesn’t mean you are going to look for it, that he has to do it himself. Repeat x 3.

2. Congratulate him for finding part of his water-gun, but now he needs to find the rest of it. Help him look for the rest of it, then become the only one looking for it while he asks you to find it.

3. Take a break by finding a five year old and convince them to make their bed in a timely manner. Time-out cards are permitted to be used. 

4. Give up. Use the hose in the front yard.

5. Spray a cup that has an airplane taped to it (stay on theme) to the end of the line. (Points taken a way if you spray your sister. Bonus points if you soak your dad in his church clothes.)