I browsed the internet today to come up with free and fun activities for the little guy and me. I stumbled upon an activity that sounded promising: Flying Fish. When we were in Chicago, Oliver loved playing with the whirlybirds that fall from maple trees. You just toss those seeds in the air, and they slowly spin down to the ground. He loved it! I kind of thought this activity might be similar. It was not.
The idea and work are simple enough. You cut out an inch-wide strip from an old magazine that's as long as the page. Then, you cut two slits on each end like this:
According to the website, all you have to do for fun is throw them in the air and watch them fly! Here goes my toss:
...and then we watched it plummet to the ground. The "flying fish" did not fly. They did what almost every other object does when you toss it into the air: the fell straight to the ground. I tried making a few more. I made some with longer tail "fins" and some with really short fins. Nothing helped. I tried to get Oliver to throw them to see if he'd find them fun:
He threw them once. They fell to the ground. He said, "Mom, that's stupid." OK, so he didn't say that, but he did walk away and left me sitting in a pile of plummet fish. Really, it kept his interest all of 2 seconds to throw them, and then he was done.
I took a photo of me doing my best "Are you serious?" face:
Here's the thing. If Oliver was old enough to enjoy crafts, he might have enjoyed actually making the fish. Maybe. But that wasn't the activity. The activity is to throw them. That activity is a load. I want to give it an F, but I have to be fair. It didn't cost me any money. It didn't waste much time. It just was nothing. For that, Flying Fish (or "Plummet Fish") gets a D grade.
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