Hot Air Balloon Lapbook

We made a hot air balloon lapbook to go along with the book, The (Mostly) True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride, by Majorie Priceman. Little One Books sent us the book and is also giving a $25 gift card to one of my readers, just click here and enter to win on my blog.

Homemade Hot Air Balloon:
We used a plastic bag and cut it almost in half, then stitch around the outside, and used a piece of egg carton for the basket. The basket has four pieces of thread, the same length stitched from the basket to the balloon.
We then placed a hair dryer in the balloon opening and turned it on...up it went, but it was hard to take a picture of it. The girls learned that hot air makes the balloon rise. You can find a good tutorial over at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman. Using a candle would be a better representation of how a hot air balloon works, but the hair dryer got the point across.

The first hot air balloon was invented by the Montgolfier brothers in France. It was first thought that smoke was the force that lifted the balloon, but years later  it was discovered that hot air rises because it weighs less than cool air.

It may not be true, but the story goes that the first riders in the hot air balloon were a rooster, duck, and sheep. We learned counting by 3's.

Some new words from the book included: splendid, ambassador, amateur, aeronaut, and slender.

This sticker B was made by Jem for balloon.

The front of the lapbook: We learned the points on a compass and colored the first balloon design.

Inside: Pictures of who watched the launch, sequence cards on the stages of launching a hot air balloon,  new words, and a map of France.

I found great resources for the book and hot air balloons over at Homeschool Share.
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