We Made Airplanes

    Well, week one of summer holidays has already passed.  It was busy, but really great.  We celebrated Canada Day, and hosted my nephew for a few days.  It was really nice to be able to have Jacob come and stay with us for a few days.  Years ago his big brother Matthew used to come and spend Canada Day with us every year.  He and Gabe got up to some adventures.  Matthew's 20 now, hard to believe, too old and busy with his own life to spend Canada Day in Tweed.  It's nice that the torch was passed to his little brother Jacob.  Rowan and Jacob (he's 11) got up to their own adventures this time, it was really nice to have that deja vu.

    Jacob wants to be a pilot when he grows up.  This summer as a special treat his parents have enrolled him in a day camp at the Hamilton War Museum.  He is quite pumped to say the least.  It was Jacob's love of planes that inspired our day trip and this craft.  It's funny that Jacob was the inspiration for this craft, and yet he was the one who enjoyed it the least.  I am used to my kids who LOVE crafts.  My guys were super excitedly painting their planes, Gracie put her own together.  Meanwhile Jacob just painted one tiny bit on the back of his plane.  "Done." He said.  "But you didn't paint anything" I said, feeling perplexed.  "Aunt Tristan, I don't really like crafts."  This was all said with the utmost politeness and I was actually really happy that he felt comfortable enough to tell me this.  Although Jacob was the inspiration, my guys really loved it.

    I found some old fashioned wooden clothes pegs in my craft bin, and they were the whole inspiration.  I used my hot glue gun and glued a popsicle stick on to the top, leaving the separated part for the tail wings.  I cut bits of the popsicle stick into smaller bits to make the tail wing, and tiny rounded bit for the top bit, whatever it's called.  I assembled 6 of them and laid them out for the kids to paint (and myself to paint, I wonder where the kids get their love of crafts from).  It was really neat to watch the kids creative juices flow as they painted their planes.

Riley's Canada Flyer

    When the planes had all dried I added the two last bits to them.  First I opened a split pin (I think that's what they are called.  You remember those cool little silver things that you used at school to make joints for paper crafts).  I hot glued that on for the propeller.  The last thing was a dowel hot glued onto the bottom so that they could hold it to make their planes fly.

Stay tuned tomorrow for our visit to the National Air Museum