At Parkway Central Middle

Eighth grade students at Parkway Central Middle School will get a unique "hot air" treat this year that goes beyond book learning. 

This fall, a team from Judy Green's math classes will create a teaching video and website. It will be used later his year to teach a hot air balloon project. 

Then, next spring, math, science, social studies and English students use the video to learn how to make hot air balloons. The climax is a "flight day" when up to 35 homemade, six-foot balloons will be launched from the school yard.

This whole project goes under the name of "Balloon-a-tics."

Parkway Central Middle students have been building hot air balloons for the last five or six years. This year, Green and Tony Ambrose, a Parkway teacher and educational technology specialist, are adding the video and website work. 

Ambrose said, "Kids pay attention to other kids. Sometimes they pay more attention to them than they do their teachers. So, we're going to take the best from previous years' work and show how kids learned in the past." 

Green will pick two students from each class to edit the video and website. The website will go on the Internet. That way, other St. Louis kids can see how the balloon-making works. Also, teachers can see how to put lessons together for their classes. 

The "Balloon-a-tics" project involves more than math. There are science principles, such as the properties of air when it is heated. There are English and social studies aspects, such reports on the history of ballooning.

Looking back in history, manned hot air balloon flights came long before anyone flew an airplane.

Green said her balloon experiments are a new experience for her students. "We'll build and fly kites during math class in the fall. But, everyone has flown a kite. But, none of them will have flown a hot air balloon," she said. 

Green learned about teaching about hot air balloons from teachers from New Mexico. The first 50 teachers got a balloon kit with instructions how to use it. 

She started balloon making into her classes in 1994. 

This year, about 125 students will be working to build the balloons. Students work in teams of four. They glue seven tissue paper panels together to make the balloon "envelope." 

They then put a draw string around the top of the balloon. It closes the top to keep the hot air in. At the bottom, they fix a wire loop to keep that end open. Green said the tissue is strong so the balloons can be rolled up and stored during construction. 

Next May, the students gather in the school yard for "flight day." 

A now-retired science teacher built special charcoal furnaces to heat the air in the balloons. There are six furnaces. Teams use two at each of three hot air stations. 

As the balloons begin the rise, they are released from their ground lines. Right after that, the math experiment kicks in. 

Using trigonometry lessons they've had in class, the kids measure how high their balloon goes before the air cools or the wind blows it off-course. 

Green said, "The highest any balloon has gotten so far is 96 feet."

She said the balloon flying "brings together all sorts of things the students have studied." 

But, there's more. Last spring, the students got to take a field trip to Spectrum Balloon Flights. They got into the type of giant hot air balloons which flew in the Great Forest Park Balloon Race last month. 

Green said this year's students will get to take that same field trip in the spring.