After lunch, the girls and I hopped on the subway and headed to the Canada Day events hosted at Queen’s Park.  We ended up having a  great time – there were free bouncy castles, live music, hula hoops, and more.

But I thought the coolest activity was the build and test your own air rocket, hosted by Makerkids.

The children were given pipe insulation for the rocket’s body, and duck tape, scissors, cardboard, streamers, and everything else you would need to complete an air rocket.

With occasional help from Rachel, Tegan built her rocket.

The Makerkids team had several launching stations setup on University Avenue, which appeared to be similar to the Make design.

As scotch tape was used for some of the cosmetic touches, I warned Tegan that the rocket may not survive its first test flight intact.  She decided to launch it anyway.

See the video for the test flight results.

Shortly after breakfast on July 1st, Tegan picked up a recently discarded brown cardboard box sitting beside our recycle bin.  She had a vision in mind: she wanted to build a rocket ship.  She needed some assistance – the cardboard box was too thick to cut with her scissors.  So she created a design.

First, I was assigned the window.  With a utility knife, I cut a circle out of the box. A clear plastic lid, also sourced from the recycle bin, was installed.  Tegan then made the fins from the box’s former flaps, and installed them using packing tape.

Next came the nose cone.  Rachel was a proponent of using the two remaining box flaps, and building an A-frame, triangular nose cone.  Tegan had her heart set on a true conical design, but couldn’t quite figure out how to achieve it with the materials at hand.  In the end, we taped 9 sheets of construction paper together, and rolled the now super-sized sheet into a cone, and installed it on the top of the rocket.

Together, the girls painted the rocket red.  To this day, it sits in a corner of their room.