So we have been fortunate to work with Sutton Oaks’ apartment community activity director Victor Zuniga and their youth for over 3 months now. As we have progressed through our workshops we have developed, we have come up with even more. Kite day was developed by Jeremy Zunker and joey lopez. They were eating lunch trying to decide which workshop to do next and realized kites would be a great activity as it involves some science, some exercise and art. While we were would have loved to have the students build their own kites (which we will be doing in the future), our mid week solution was purchasing some 1 dollar kites for each kid and then an air foil kite for everyone to learn how to fly a two line setup. Jeremy chose the air foil kite as it has no breakable parts unless it rips.
It turned out that on the Thursday of our kite day, for whatever reason San Antonio decided to have an unseasonable windy day with gusts reaching 20 mph. Sutton Oaks Apartments is fortunate to have a city of San Antonio park literally in the same parking lot. We took the students out to the field and showed them how to setup their kites and get them flying. It was amazing to watch kids from 6-12 years old just run and run and the time to seemingly last forever for them.
Jeremy and joey got the air foil kite setup and that was a whole other level. Jeremy had flown one before but joey hadn’t, so Jeremy showed him the ropes and then they took turns teaching the youth, as well as adults how to fly the air foil kite. Flying the kite and seeing the kite flown was like watching a juicy fruit commercial, fun was had by all. Everyone was very surprised at the amount of exercise flying the air foil kite provided.
We highly recommend a kite day as a STEAM based activity, it worked slew of senses for the youth and adults as well. Our next goal is to have students make their own kites and fly them. So stay tuned!
