Blast Off! in Montessori F Cheryl Morris and Beverly Junell
Children love to make things go. Just watch boys and girls
playing with action figures or toy cars and one can witness
their joy in narrating their own life dramas. Experiencing
rocketry is usually something we only see on the 4th of July or
perhaps on television during a space launch. Children in
Montessori F recently were able to experience the feeling of
launching one of their creations into “orbit” in our bottle
rocket experiment. The children made paper rockets by wrapping
paper around a “gauge” tube to make a rocket body which they
then plugged on one end. They added decorations, fins and
whatever “aerodynamic creativity” they could muster. Finally,
their classroom leaders would load the rockets onto the launch
tube and the children would stomp the launch facilitator (a 2L
soda bottle) thereby propelling their dreams into the air. Along
with this, the children watched space launch and space
exploration videos, learned about the planets and even