Matchbook Rocket – 1/24/2015

I saw an instructional video online about making matchbook rockets and thought it would be a fun thing to do with the kids. I found the video from Grant Thompson “The King of Random”. We did this when mom was out doing something else. We started by watching the video he made for Matchbook Rockets.

After watching the video with the kids, we went to the link provided to download the template. The saying that there is nothing free in life is true. I was forced to register for a website in order to download the “free” template, and had to artfully navigate around all of the pay links to find it.

With the template downloaded, the kids and I were finally ready to follow the simple instructions and build our matchbook rockets! We started by cutting the heads off most of the matches in the box. This was not easy and I ended up doing most of the work.

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We created the other pieces of the template and assembled a rocket, quite excited for the “shoot up to 40 feet” result!

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We excitedly took the rocket outside and had 5 unsuccessful launches before we gave up on the whole project. I wonder how many takes it took for him to get it just right on the video. I’ve unsubscribed from his YouTube channel. We had fun trying to build it, but it would have been better if there was a chance for success!

Hogan Haake