Building Rockets with my Daughter
 

Last night my daughter Taylor came to me and asked if we could finish assembling some of her rockets. She's not really all that much into rocketry, and I try not to push her, so this was a welcome opportunity.

I helped her get her Wacky Wiggler together (that puppy's gonna need some masking tape, it wiggles way too much assembled) and then she assembled the shock cord mount for her Custom Elite (I helped her a lot with this one). She put fillets on her Quest Screamin' Demon. I really like that one... skill level 1 with through-the-wall fins (making assembly easy) but it has nice waterslide decals and actually needs to be primed, sanded, and painted. A good introduction to hobby rocketry.

As we were setting things aside to dry, Taylor said "Someday I want to go to the store and buy a kit and do it mostly by myself." Made me feel a little guilty for helping her.

I thought about the substantial pile of rocket parts I bought with my birthday money... and the result should be obvious. I pulled out the box and showed it to her, asking her if she could identify the various parts of a basic rocket. As she pulled out the small bits and laid them on the box-top, I dug up a piece of BT-20 and a set of unused Estes Star Dart fins from a kitbash I did. I cut a 9" length of the body tube, bagged up all the parts and said "here's your kit" (or something to that effect).

She was ecstatic. I even found the Star Dart instruction sheet. She spent the next hour assembling the rocket, with guidance from me, but I made sure that she did the actual assembly.

It was great, and the nearly-finished rocket looks as good as my Star Dart did at the same point.

Great story, Sol. Thanks for posting.

Doug

I experienced this same thing with my grand-daughter (I'm obviously older),... as we were building her 1st rocket she said to me, "Papa Bob, you said I could build it." I was just showing her. So I have to be very careful and not take over the build.

Sol,

Building rockets with my daughter has brought me more pleasure than anything else I have done in rocketry.

She has achieved things I never dreamed possible.

Same for my son and I. We really enjoy watching some sci fi or otherwise space related movies (Star Trek TOS at the moment) while building, and he LOVES to see the rockets in the van when I pick him up from school on a good wind day. It's been one of the most significant things we've bonded over, no doubt.

How old is your daughter Solomoriah? My son is 6.

That Razor was the first rocket my daughter built by herself too! I remember that she glued on the fins, but she had me adjust their position to get them perfectly straight. I'm looking at it on the other side of the room right now. That is a great rocket for a first build.

Now she kind of laughs at me for building rockets, but then again she's 16. Suddenly, I've become the dumbest person that ever lived and I don't "get" anything. Oh well. I'm hoping in a few years she'll figure out I'm not quite as dumb as she thought I was.

Taylor is 9. She's really more into games than rockets (and I don't mean video games). She is an avid Heroscape player, and is getting good at the game... and her mom plays too, and kicks my fanny all over the map.

Which is why I won't get any rocket building done today...

That is a cool story Sol and great 'bonding' time! :) On that Wacky-Wiggler, do NOT launch it on a C6- even tho it is listed as one of the recommended motors..I did on mine after it's underwhelming performance on the B motor..It took a 90 degree turn horizontal and went across the neighborhood to never never land..lol..

When I was a kid I didn't know ANY girls who launched rockets. Now I know tons of guys who launch with their daughters, and at NAR events there are usually as many girls as boys. I think 10 to 15 years from now we're going to see the advent of lots of "Baggers" (Born Again Girl Rocketeers). :p Actually, I guess they are already here. One of my daughter's classmates launches frequently with his mom, who launched with her dad as a kid.

I was the same way, and when she was REALLY bored, she would come and build something with me. But after building her first "all by myself" rocket, she really got into the idea of the "skill levels" and wanted to work her way up. As inaccurate as the Estes skill levels are these days, they were (and still are) a big motivator to my daughter. (The Flis, Semroc, and Starlight skill levels are all way better estimates of the skill needed to build the rocket.)

The most surprising thing to me when I started launching with my daughters was that they had no interest in seeing rockets go really, really high. They liked to see the whole flight, and were heartbroken if we lost a rocket, so low and slow was the way to go.

All the coupler joints on her rocket seem very wiggly; I think perhaps a little tape to make them just a bit more snug might be called for.