The boys were playing with the stomp rockets and my husband offered to help them get their real rocket up and running.
They had received a rocket and a few small engines from my brother in law as a Christmas gift but we had yet to get around to assembling it and setting it off. The boys were eager to help but soon became frustrated at how complicated the instructions were (to them especially) and how difficult it was to snap pieces together.
They helped here and there but mostly they played on the swing set and watched my husband assemble it.
When it was finally ready to launch we headed over to a big field and the boys counted down ended with "blastoff!"
Unfortunately, the first two or three times nothing happened. My husband is a very resourceful guy though and soon had the rocket zooming.
The boys were in awe of how high it went, how fast if took off and we were all thrilled that the parachute worked!
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| pushing the button; nothing happens |
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| It finally zoomed off! |
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| Can you see the red speck in the sky? |
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| Here it is just a bit closer; parachute engaged. |
Unfortunately, when the rocket came back down it landed in the two highest branches of some of the tallest trees. My husband was going to climb up the tree and try to get the rocket down but since dead branches kept falling off and I had visions of becoming a widow on my 13th wedding anniversary I nagged him like crazy to get back down.
They all tried throwing rocks at the branch/ rocket to try and shake it loose and talked about ways to prevent this from happening next time.
I promised the boys I'd buy another rocket and we found a few for only $8-$12 on Amazon. The boys talked about what makes a rocket work, how it takes off, why it falls back to Earth, etc. They inspected the launch pad and looked at the soot and burn marks left on both sides of the disk. It was such a fun end to our day.
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| One side of the launch disk |
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| the back side of the launch disk |
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