In our Wind and Flight week, we teach a super simple game of straw races to explore hands-on how the direction the wind is coming from, the angle it blows out and how strong the wind is affects the motion of the object that the wind is blowing around.

Straw races can be simple:

• hand a child a straw and a pompom (or a cotton ball, pingpong ball, feather, etc.) Tell them to blow the object across the table or across the floor
• mark a starting line and a finish line with masking tape
• have a race between multiple children
• have a target to aim at or a basket to sink the object in to (you can tape a plastic cup to the side of the table, and the child blows a pompom across the table into the cup)

Or you can create a maze like one of these: foam buildings; lego maze; play-dough, tubes. or paper arches.

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