Go Fly a Kite

HISTORY OF KITES

	The Kitehistory.com website features a bright blue font on a sky-blue background, which is awful on the eyes; however there’s a lot of excellent historical information here, illustrated with period photographs. Various pages cover the Wright brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, Lawrence Hargrave, meteorological kites, and war kites.
	Chinese Kites has information on the ancient history of Chinese kites – which date back as least to the 5th century BCE. (Marco Polo brought one home with him after his famous 13th-century trip to Cathay.)
	By Judith Jango-Cohen, Ben Franklin’s Big Shock (Lerner Publishing, 2006) in the On My Own Science series is the story of Franklin’s kite experiment and the discovery that lightning is electricity, told in simple language for ages 4-7.
	Rosalyn Schanzer’s How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning (HarperCollins, 2002) covers the many aspects of Franklin’s multitalented life, but concentrates on his studies of electricity and his (dangerous) landmark kite experiment. For ages 4-8.
	In Stephen Krensky’s Ben Franklin and His First Kite (Simon Spotlight, 2002), the kite is not the kite of the famous thunderstorm experiment, but the one the boy Ben rigged to pull himself across the millpond while swimming. For ages 5-8.
	Resources to accompany the three-part PBS series Benjamin Franklin include background information, a teacher’s guide, a virtual tour of “Ben’s Town,” and instructions for making a kite. (Do not fly it in a thunderstorm.)
	From USHistory.org, Franklin and his Electric Kite is a detailed illustrated account of Franklin’s most famous experiment, including his own description of how he built his kite.
	For many more resources, see Ben Franklin.
	Learn about Alexander Graham Bell’s spectacular tetrahedral kites.

 SCIENCE, MATH, AND KITES

	From Scientific American’s Science Buddies, Stability Science: How Tails Help a Kite Fly has instructions for building a sled kite, suggestions for experiments, explanations of results, and links to other sites to explore.
	From the Smithsonian, Kiting Up the Sky is a detailed unit on kites, variously covering how and why a kite flies, kite history, kite poems and stories (with helps for inventing your own), a kite-making project, and a note on the Smithsonian Kite Festival. For elementary- and middle-school-level kids.
	From the American Kitefliers Association, Why a Kite Flies is an illustrated explanation of lift, drag, yaw, pitch, and roll.
	From NASA, the Beginner’s Guide to Aeronautics is a terrific online textbook for high-school-level students, preferably with a bit of physics under their belts. Included is a detailed section on kite history, science, and real-world flying.
	Are GIANT KITES the answer to the problem of renewable energy? Check it out.
	In Stuart J. Murphy’s Let’s Fly a Kite (Perfection Learning, 2000), a MathStart 2 book, Bob and Hannah, on a trip to the beach, argue over everything from sharing the backseat of the car to decorating their new kite. Their mathematically savvy babysitter solves their problems using the concept of symmetry. For ages 5-8.
	Learn geometry with Kite Math.