American
The Wright Brothers and the First Flight
Two bicycle-shop brothers who decided people could fly, and kept on tinkering and crashing and fixing until, one cold morning on a windy beach, a machine of theirs actually lifted off the ground.
This Week · Making Things
Making Things: if you could invent one thing to help people, what?
For littler ones: If you could make one thing to help people, what would you make?
This week we're wondering about making things. If you could invent one thing to help people, what would it be? For any reason at all. It's a good one to turn over in the car or at the table, because every inventor we'll meet started with exactly that kind of question — and everyone at your house will answer it differently.
This week's stories
American
Benjamin Franklin and the Kite in the Storm
A man who couldn't leave a good question alone — and flew a kite up into a thunderstorm to find out what lightning really was, which was a far riskier thing to do than he let on.
American
Betsy Ross and the First Flag
A seamstress with a needle and thread, asked to make something nobody had ever made before — a flag for a brand-new country that didn't quite exist yet.
Talk about it
- If you could invent one thing to help people, what would it be — and who would it help?
- The Wright brothers crashed a lot before they flew. What do you think kept them going back out to the beach?
- Franklin, the Wrights, and Betsy Ross each started with a problem nobody had solved yet. What's a problem you'd want to be the one to solve?
A new question every week.
Listen together in the app — short audio stories for kids 4–10, at bedtime, on the drive, in the drop-off line.
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