How to Make a Tissue Paper Kite

Video Transcript

"In this clip, we're going to see how to make a tissue paper kite. For this clip, you will need a glue stick, some tissue, some scissors, some lightweight sticks, such as bamboo, some string, and some scraps of tissue paper. To start with, we need to find our two sticks, one longer, one a bit shorter. Lay them down on the table, and cross them across each other. Get your string, hold the two pieces together and wrap round and round in a diagonal way. Across diagonally that way, and then across diagonally that way to make the two sticks stay at right angles to each other as much as you can. Round and round, both ways. That end'll go round and round that way, and then bring it back up, and, when you've got it fairly firm, tie the two ends together of the two loops. That's it. You could do this with sticky tape if you found that more easy to manage. So when you've got your knot done, spread out your tissue paper on your table. Lay the cross on the tissue paper diagonally, from corner to corner. Have another length of string, and have it ready to go round the kite. It'll have to catch onto the loops at each corner of the kite. Again, get a little loop ready, and tie it round the first. And then to this corner, and wrap it round there a couple of times. And knot it off. And to this corner, and wrap it round there. And knot it off if you can wrap it round itself, and tie that tight. And down to the next one, and do the same thing. My string's not quite long enough to continue to the last piece, so, that's no problem at all, we'll just cut off another piece and do that one. I'll start at the bottom, 'cause that's nearest to me, easiest to reach. There's the knot. Do a double knot just to be sure. And then this one needs to join back up to there, fairly firmly. Round and round and round. And then I do an under and over knot. So we've got a kite shape formed with a string. And lay it all down again in position. I can see this is a bit too wide, as well. So I'll trim it down. Because we don't want too much weight in the kite. If we are hoping this kite flies in the air, we want it to be as lightweight as possible. But we want it to be the right shape, as well. That's a good kite shape, so, I'll get my glue stick, and holding it firmly on the table, run the glue stick round the shape of the whole of the kite. Round there, swivel it, around there, and one more side to do. Swivel it. Round here. You might need a grownup or a friend to help you with this bit, 'cause it sort of needs two pairs of hands, but I'm going to try and do it by myself. So, try to keep that in the center, in the right place, and then each piece where the sticky tape....where the sticky is, is going to fold over the string. So the string's inside that fold now. The string's inside there. Catch the string inside the fold, there. And once it's all firmly stuck down around the edges, you need to have a shortish piece of string, which you tie on the long frame about halfway down one strut, over and over. Let it come up into the air, (this sounds strange), and go down again to halfway on the other one, here. And over and over. That's the piece that you're going to fit your kite string on to, but we still haven't it's tail. So, the bottom point, that's where we attach another length of string by tying round. You need to get your smaller pieces of tissue, and make them into a sort of bow tie by squinching them a little bit, putting them on, and tying round it. Another couple will do the job. Loop it round, and push it through. The last thing you need is your kite string. Push it through the piece of string that you've already attached to the frame, and tie that with a double knot. That's how to make a tissue paper kite."