Take your kid’s imagination to new heights with these fun and easy DIY rockets! Your child will love making a straw rocket or setting off an exciting bottle rocket!
Are you looking for ways to get your children outdoors, away from technology, and enhance their creative minds? Do your kids love launching things in the air and seeing how high they fly?
Here are 5 fun and easy ways to make a rocket and home. Whether it be constructing a mini rocket out of paper or setting off an exciting bottle rocket, these activities will surely bring out your little astronaut’s imagination and help foster their creativity.
So get ready for some out-of-this-world fun with these incredible DIY rockets!
How to Build a DIY Rocket
Straw Rocket
Making straw rockets is an engaging way to introduce the concept of air pressure into playtime. With just some basic materials like straws, paper, and take, plus a bit of imagination and problem-solving skills from you and your kids, you can build fantastic rockets that take off across the room!
There is so much room to explore with a straw rocket. Try different types of straws and see how the width and length of the straws affect how far you can shoot a rocket. You can also launch the rocket at different angles to see which one would go farther.
Balloon Rocket
Building balloon rockets is a great way to have fun with the kids and explore physics at the same time. Your kids will love watching their rocket soar into the air!
All you need to get started are some balloons, a straw or plastic tube, tape, and a few other simple supplies. Once you have all your materials ready, attach the straw or tube securely to the balloon using tape. Then blow up the balloon, seal the open end of the straw with your finger, aim the rocket upward, release the rocket, and watch it fly!
Match Stick Rocket
If your kids like explosive science experiments that involve fire, look no further than the match stick rocket. The anticipation of when the combustion will happen makes this rocket launch super exciting. Get ready for lots of screams of delight!
Slingshot Straw Rocket
Unlike the other diy rockets mentioned above that replied on air for launch, the slingshot straw rocket is all about potential and kinetic energy.
Your kids will love shooting the slingshot straw rocket at home or see how far their rockets can go by launching them outside. They can create the fins and experiment with the optimal number of fins and fin designs that will make the rockets really fly high!
Bottle Rocket
When it comes to a safe but explosive rocket launch, no DIY rocket can beat the bottle rocket. The anticipation while waiting for the gas to build up inside the bottle makes this rocket extra exciting!
However, building a bottle rocket requires more materials than the other rockets above, and the construction itself using household materials can be difficult. That’s why I have been holding off doing this science experiment with my kids. The last thing I want is to spend all the time making the bottle rocket to have it fail and disappoint my kids!
Luckily, KiwiCo has the bottle rocket as part of their Tinker Crate subscription line. You can grab the crate by itself in the KiwiCo store for $27.95, or save more by receiving it as part of the monthly subscription! It comes with all the materials you need!
My kids grew up with a variety of KiwiCo crates and we incorporate them into our homeschool curriculum for science, art, and geography. So they were super excited to see the bottle rocket crate and got started on building it right away!
Similar to their other crates, this Tinker Crate came with the Tinker Zine magazine and the bottle rocket blueprint as well as all the materials you need to make the bottle rocket and more.
The Tinker Zine magazine contained detailed explanations of the science behind the bottle rocket along with helpful illustrations. It made explaining the chemical reaction that produced carbon dioxide gas and how the built-up pressure inside the bottle caused the rocket to launch into the sky easy for this homeschool mom.
The comprehensive instructions in the blueprint were easy to follow, and my 9-year-old son had no problem constructing the rocket by himself.
The Tinker Crate bottle rocket used citric acid and baking soda mixed with water to generate carbon dioxide. The crate contained enough citric acid and baking soda for multiple rock launches. This allowed us to repeat the experiment over and over again, which made my kids very happy. It’s also interesting to see the white salt residue left over from the chemical reaction.
Overall, the KiwiCo bottle rocket crate was an easy and fun project. My kids loved pouring the water and the citric acid/baking soda mixture into the bottle and watching it shoot high in the air. The construction was sturdy except for the foam nose cone that flew off after a couple of launches, but the bottle rocket flew fine without it.
Since we have a stash of baking soda and citric acid at home we were able to do the bottle rocket experiment again the next day. We are going to keep the bottle rocket on our science shelf in our homeschool room so that we can play with it again when my little aspiring rocket scientists need something to do!
The Tinker Zine magazine also included additional science experiments you can do with your kids to reinforce the science concepts learned from the bottle rocket project. For example, in the bubbling balloon experiment, you would use baking soda, citric acid, and water to inflate a balloon instead of launching a rocket. The chemical reaction is the same as the one we observed in the bottle rocket launch but just applied differently.
Building and launching your own bottle rocket with the KiwiCo Tinker Crate is an exciting and educational experience. You can observe Newton’s Third Law of Motion in action as you launch your own amazing bottle rocket into the sky. And the crate saved us a whole lot of time and effort as it provided all the materials and instructions. I definitely recommend getting this crate for your aspiring rocket scientists!
YOU MAY LIKE: