Thursday’s breeze and sunny skies made it the perfect day for students at SPARK Academy at Cowart Elementary to get outside and fly kites. Kindergarten through third grade students have been busy building, decorating and, in some cases, designing their own kites. On Thursday, April 20, they had a chance to put their kites to the test.

SPARK’s STEM Specialist Jennifer Kennedy said, “The kindergartener kites are the least complicated, but as they get older, the kites get a little more complicated and they do more work on them. In the third grade, they have to design their own.”

SPARK second graders class built “sled kites,” and the most popular decorative choice was, by far, Baby Yoda. The second graders squealed with excitement as the kites they created lifted into the air and floated above.

Principal Lorian Charles feels that the kids building their own kites has tremendous benefits to SPARK Academy students.

“It creates equity, because when kids were bringing kites, you would find that not everyone would bring a kite or everyone doesn’t have the opportunity to have one here. When everybody builds a kite, everybody gets a kite,” she said.

The engineering and design process of the students building their own kites is important for many reasons. By the time students are in the third grade, they are ready to design their own kites. They even have the opportunity to test their design in a wind tunnel prior to taking it outside for kite day.

Kennedy said, “We talk about the lift that the wind pushing on the kite creates. We talk about the ratio of your kite has to be light enough that it is carried by the wind but not too light that it flies away. We talk about the structure of the kite and how it needs some sort of skeleton to hold it out and catch the wind. We talk about the kite tail for stability and how the kite needs a tail so that it doesn’t spin.

“That is something that is one of our core things. You come up with a plan; you explore it; you make changes and see if it works,” Charles said.