Make a kite by reusing an old magazine and watch Disney’s “Born in China” to celebrate Earth Day.
Our family went to see DisneyNature’s Born in China, and we were inspired. The movie tell the stories of 4 different animals that live in the remote terrain of western China. The scenery was spectacular, and like all the DisneyNature movies, you feel an emotional connection to the animals, their families, and their lives. We learned so much about pandas, golden snub-nose monkeys, snow leopards, and the chiru.
The movie starts and ends with cranes flying in the Chinese sky, which inspired us to make a kite that would fly in our sky. And we decided to make them out of things we would normally throw away, so we could be kinder to the earth that we share with these amazing animals.
How to Make a Kit Out of a Magazine
Supplies
All things you can find around your home
- An old Magazine
- A stick, dowel, bamboo skewer, old hanger, or something straight cut to 14 inches
- String
- Ruler
- Tape
- Pen
- Hole punch
- Scissors
- Glue stick
Kite Directions
Take out the center page of the magazine so you have a paper that is 17 inches by 11 inches with a fold in the middle. (Or you can be like my daughter and take out several center pages until you find one with cats on it.)
With the paper folded in half, make one inch in front the fold on the top of the page. The picture shows marking it on the bottom, but my kite turned out upside down. You’ll see.
Then mark 3 inches in from the fold on the bottom of the page.
Draw a line between the two marks. This is your fold line.
Fold the page on you marked along the fold line.
Then draw a line and fold the other page the same way. Or skip the measuring and just try to make both pages even.
Tape the fold where the two pages come together. The center of the magazine page is inside that fold, so it doesn’t matter if you ripped the page some while taking it out of the staples.
Punch a hole at the top and bottom of the fold. We realized later that it’s best to place a piece of tape down first, then punch a hole through that and the paper. It reinforces the hole and makes the kite stronger. Sorry it’s not in the pictures.
Open up the fold pages and tape the dowel, or whatever you end up finding, along the widest part of the kite. Tape it down at both sides, but not in the middle. The dowel gives the kite structure, but you need the paper to bend and catch the wind. (And in this picture you can see that my kite is upside-down. Oh well, it will still fly just fine.)
Make a kite tail by cutting about a foot of string and glueing triangles over the string. You’ll need a triangle above and below the string, then glue the two triangles together. I added four triangles, with a front and back, to our tail.
Finish the kite by tying the tail to the hole on the wider fold and the rest of the kite string to the hole on the narrower part of the fold. You want the kite string on the same end as your wooden dowel.
We first tried out our new kites in our backyard, but we don’t have enough room to actually launch a kite.
Although my kids had a lot of fun running around with the kites.
Then we headed to the park to test them out.
There wasn’t much wind, so we couldn’t get them up very high.
We’re taking them to the beach today where there should be plenty of wind. I’ll share pictures so you can see our high-flying kites soon.
Earth Day
It was so much fun to celebrate Earth Day by watching DisneyNature’s Born in China and making recycled kites out of things we already had.