Balls better than planes

So, I learned this last night, not today, but it's my blog, so it still counts.

Went to a Cub Scout Pack meeting last night with my son (he's a Bear Cub) and they had a paper airplane meeting.  Last year they had to fold paper planes and got judged on distance.  We prepared this year by practicing a little folding before the meeting, but it was to no avail as they mixed things up a little.  This year it was a launching competition.

So they flipped over folding chairs, attached an cardboard cutout of an aircraft carrier to the side and stretched a rubber band between two of it's legs and put some boxes across the room.  The goal was to build some kind of flying machine that you could "Launch" and get it into the boxes.  They explained the rules to be that you could build whatever shape or design you wished and attach a paper clip in some fashion.  The supplies provided were paper, paper clips, scissors and tape. The scissors were not supposed to be used as part of the vehicle.

So we got busy and my son got a little frustrated so I helped him out.  I wasn't supposed to but I gave him some ideas on how to attach the paper clip and whatnot.  We started by flattening out the piece of paper he had crumpled up in frustration and then rolled it up so it looked like a straw (think "fuselage"), and applied some tape to hold it.  Then folded another piece of paper in to a wing shape and taped that on (think "wing").  Then taped on a paperclip to the bottom front. 

He tried launching it a couple times by catching the paperclip on the rubber band, pulling it back and letting go.  We adjusted the wings, but it would just crash and burn each time.  It would make it about half way to the target.

Next design was to fold up one of the paper plane patterns we had been practicing before the meeting.  We taped a paper clip to the bottom of that one, but it flew worse than the first one.

The Webelos were launching tiny planes across the room, they were flying all the way across the room.  The other Bears, Tigers and Wolfs were all doing about as good as my son.  I'll give it to him though, he kept trying to make adjustments to the first plane we put together and get that thing to fly.

Eventually the frustration won out, I could see it in his face from across the room.  He grabbed a new piece of paper, wadded it up into a little ball and started taping a paper clip to it.  I offered to compress the paper a little better and he said yea.  He wrapped it up nice and tight with tape.

Next up, he launched that "ball" and he just missed the target box.  he waited his turn and tried again, and bingo, right in the box.  He won for the Bears, as he was the first to hit the target.

He learned that sometimes the simpler the approach works best, and I learned once again that my son is smarter than I sometimes give him credit for being.