The cost of a hot air baloon lancher and propane fuel canister is $489, including shipping and <a target="new" href="http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm" onclick="g_openWindow('http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm', 300, 800, 'fulfillwindow');return false;">fulfillment</a>.
This purpose of this proposal is to keep a very successful classroom project alive. For the past five years at Kernodle Middle School (Greensboro, NC), the team I work with initiates a "hot air balloon" project in all of our math classes (4 classes - approx. 100-110 students) in which teams of 3 or 4 students make a scale-model hot-air balloon out of tissue paper (the model balloons are about 5 feet high and 5 feet in diameter) and then launched using a special propane burner and chimney assembly. This process usually takes 3-or 4 class periods to build the balloons and one more to launch them. The project augments our 7th grade math curriculum by giving a "hands-on" lesson in volume and surface area calculation, scale drawing and decimal measurement, density, temperature and pressure measurements and calculations. The teacher who originated this project has transferred to another state and taken the propane burner/chimney assembly with him (as it was his personal property)- we very much want to keep this project going as student's coming into the seventh grade have seen the balloons launched in their sixth grade year and very much look forward to the experience of building and launching the balloons themselves. As a special ed. teacher, I work with all the math classes and can see the excitement and enthusiasm such a fun project builds in all the students (particularly some of the students who have had a difficult time with the more abstract portions of the curriculum)- This project builds the student's social and leadership skills as well as their practical math skills as building the balloons takes teamwork, planning and cooperation. The only piece of hardware we are missing is the propane burner/chimney assembly, which is used to inflate/launch our hot-air balloons.
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