Wind Spinners

Catch the wind and see colors spin! Hang your wind spinner beside an open window or under a protected porch roof to catch the wind in the four Color Sticks-designed sections of your spinner.

• 1.

  Wind is the natural movement of air. Wind can move so slowly that it can hardly be felt or blow so hard that it can cause objects to move. Use markers on large paper to create a Windy Day chart of: "things that blow away", "things that move but don’t blow away", and "things that don’t move at all". Use the Internet to find out how wind helps people, animals, and plants.

• 2.

  Make a wind spinner that will move in the slightest breeze, but won’t blow away. Cut 2 large circles from white poster board. TIP: trace around a large, overturned plastic bowl to get two same-size circles.

• 3.

  Decorate both sides of the poster board circles with Crayola Color Sticks. Use your imagination to create a unique design, or trace a roll of masking tape all over the circle and color each area of the design a different color. You might choose three favorite colors for each design. Or choose colors that are in the same family (blues and greens or oranges and yellows).

• 4.

  Use scissors to cut a slit from the edge to the center of each circle.

• 5.

  Nest the poster board circles by sliding each circle into the slit of the other and pulling them together to create a spherical shape. Use tape to hold the circles in place so they are perpendicular to each other.

• 6.

  Cut five 12-inch lengths of ribbon. Attach 1 ribbon to the top of the spinner using Crayola Glue or punch holes with a hole punch and tie the ribbon through the holes. Attach remaining ribbons to the bottom edges of the spinner with glue.

• 7.

  Hang beside an open window or under a protected porch roof to catch the wind in the spinner flaps.

Benefits

• Students research wind and its effect on people, objects, animals and plants.
• Students identify objects that can and cannot be moved by the wind.
• Students create an object that can be moved by the wind.

Adaptations

• Research legends about the wind in different cultures, such as Native American wind gods and Indonesian wind folktales.
• Work on teams to investigate different names for the wind, such as Chinook and Santa Ana. Create wind spinners with a different wind name on each half of each circle. Share information about each wind name with your classmates.