How the Hot Air Balloon

Was Born

Warm-up QuestionsWhat is a clothes line?

What is hot air balloon?

Have

Warm-up QuestionsWhat is a crowd?

What makes us fall down and not up? What holds us to the

ground?

Warm-up QuestionsWhat lifts a hot air balloon off the ground?

Once upon a time, in a country called France, long before there were airplanes, two brothers named Joseph and Jack sat watching bed sheets dry on a line.

Watching clothes dry was not much fun, so the brothers asked their father to build a fire near the clothes line hoping that the extra heat from the fire would dry the clothes faster.

When their father had built the fire, Joseph and Jack continued to watch the bed sheets. Each time the smoke and embers would rise on the hot air from the fire, the bed sheets would lift up, also.

Jack and Joseph looked at each other and shouted, “WOW, HOT AIR RISES!”

As they continued to watch the fire, and the sheets rising and falling, Jack and Joseph started talking about what they could do with rising hot air.

Joseph thought that if they could build a really big balloon and somehow put hot air in it, maybe they could find a way to lift things into the air.

Jack and Joseph tried to lift several containers with hot air. They tried to lift light wooden boxes and cloth-covered packages.

With each try they learned more about what stuff worked and what stuff did not. Soon, their experiments led them to build a balloon big enough to carry people in a big basket they attached beneath it.

There was only one problem. No one wanted to ride in the hot air balloon because they were scared to go up that high in the sky. Joseph and Jack asked everyone they knew to get into the balloon basket, but no one would go.

So, they decided to try it out on their pets. Joseph had a rooster named Red and a duck named Waddle. Jack offered his sheep named Monty.

On the day of the flight, a crowd gathered because they were so excited to see what was going to happen to the animals.

After putting hot air in the big balloon, Joseph and Jack put Red, Waddle, and Monty in the basket below it. They gave the animals big hugs and untied the balloon.

The hot air balloon lifted the animals higher and higher into the air. The crowd first stood in amazement and then began to cheer with excitement!

Eight minutes later, the balloon and the animals all landed safely in the fields below. Now, more than 200 years later in a time of superfast airplanes, we can still thank Red, Waddle, and Monty for helping us get into the air for the first time!