Whether you are camping in the jungle while on a research expedition, trying to secure parts for an experiment in a lab, or any of thousands of other possibilities – knots are VERY useful to know.

For this activity, you will need:
6 pieces of thin rope, about 18″ long each (about 9 feet total)
2 different colored tapes
1 piece of dowel
1 piece of cardboard

The first step is to assemble your practice board.
To do so:
Cut your cardboard to be about 3 inches wide and 8 inches long.
Punch pairs of holes along the length of the cardboard as in the image below.

Next, you need to prepare your rope.
To do so:
Cut the rope into 18″ long pieces.
For each piece wrap each end in a different color tape.  You can see the white and black ends of our ropes in the image below.  Many “How to tie knots” books and websites will use different colored ends to help you tell which side of the rope to use when tying the knot.

Now thread each rope piece through a pair of the holes in your knot board.  We suggest you put the same colored ends all on the same side of the board.

Next, you need to learn a little vocabulary.

• Bend – When you join two ropes together.
• Bight – a “U” shape in your rope
• Hitch – When you attach a rope to something else.
• Loop –
• Standing End – The end of the rope you are not actively using.
• Standing Part – The length of rope between the Standing End and where you are working to make a knot.
• Tail or Working End – The end of the rope you are working with to make a knot.

Now you are ready to start!  We suggest starting with the overhand knot and the half hitch. These two knots are used in many other knots and they are useful on their own!  Both are on the top row of our sample board, using the dark blue rope.

For our sample board, we also used the overhand knot to secure the right hand side of our yellow, purple, and red ropes so they wouldn’t pull back out of the board.

You’ll find links below to websites that specialize in teaching how to tie knots.  For each knot, we have two links.  Pick the one that works best for you. They both have lots of good information about when to use the different knots.

Overhand Knot (right side of our dark blue rope)
101 Knots or Animated Knots

Half Hitch (left side of our dark blue rope)
101 Knots or Animated Knots

Two Half Hitches (yellow rope)
101 Knots or Animated Knots

Clove Hitch (purple rope)
101 Knots or Animated Knots

Square Knot (pink rope)
101 Knots or Animated Knots

Sheet Bend (light blue rope)
101 Knots or Animated Knots

Bowline (red rope)
101 Knots or Animated Knots

Have you ever watched an action movie or a cartoon where the heroes have to crawl through a room filled with lasers?

Want to try it yourself?  Here’s how!

You’ll need:

• Blue painter’s tape
• Roll of crepe paper

String the crepe paper across a hallway or doorway, using the painter’s tape to attach the ends to the walls.

Try to move through your maze without breaking any of the strands.
Did you manage to do it?
Move the strands around and try again!

We found this fun idea here.  Check out their other ideas, great for days when you can’t get outside.

Tops are fun and easy to make! You’ll need:

• Two sheets of Origami paper
• A toothpick
• A pin
• Glue

Since Origami instructions can be tricky to write and hard to follow when the instructions aren’t well done, here’s a video that shows you exactly what to do, step by step…

How to Make an Origami Top

As she mentions in the video, if the hole for the toothpick gets too big, the top won’t work well.  If you find your top isn’t spinning well anymore, try adding a small drop of glue where the toothpick goes into and out of the paper.  Let it dry completely before playing with it again.

Here’s a puzzling question for you…
In the picture above where the top is actually spinning, why is one of the orange sides so much larger than the other orange side?

Tie-dying isn’t hard to do, especially when you use a Sharpie!

You’ll need:
A t-shirt to dye
At least one Sharpie marker
Rubber Bands
A pipette
8 to 16 oz of rubbing alcohol (also called isopropyl alcohol – this can be purchased in the first-aid section of any drug store)

We suggest watching this video to understand the process before you proceed:
Tie-dying with a Sharpie

(1) Wash and dry your t-shirt.  Don’t use fabric softener or dryer sheets.

(2) Pick your pattern. You’ll find instructions for how to fold your fabric to make many of the traditional designs here.
Please note, the folding instructions say your shirt should be wet. Since we are using Sharpies, not liquid dye, your shirt actually needs to be DRY.

(3) Following the method you picked, fold your DRY shirt and secure it with the rubber bands, as needed.

(4) Before moving on to the next step, take a moment and protect your work surface. You don’t want the Sharpie to stain the furniture, floor, or other surfaces.  You can work outside in the grass or use a trash bag or other piece of plastic to protect the surface.

(5) Color the sections of your folded shirt with your Sharpie. Don’t forget to flip it over and color the back side too!  We recommend MORE color (less white areas) than in the image below.

(6) Let your colored t-shirt sit for at least 24 hours. The longer it sits (even a few days!), the better the sharpie stains the fabric.

(7) For this next step, you need to protect the surface under your shirt or work outside in the grass.  Anything under your shirt may be stained by the marker!
Using the pipette, add rubbing alcohol on the different sections of your tied-up shirt to make the marker color bleed.  Don’t forget to flip it over to do the back.

(8) Let your shirt dry completely.  This may take until tomorrow! Don’t forget, while your shirt is still wet, anything underneath will be stained by the marker.

(9) Once it is dry, take off the rubber bands and open up your shirt.

(10) Once you are certain your shirt is completely dry, you need to decide what to do next.  We experimented with several methods to “set” the ink, so it doesn’t wash out in the laundry, but we didn’t find one that worked well. Here’s what we tried:

We didn’t do anything to Sample #1.  It is our experimental control.
Sample # 2 was ironed with a hot iron for 5 minutes.
Sample #3 was put in a hot dryer for 15 minutes.
Sample #4 was soaked in white vinegar for 30 minutes. It was allowed to dry and then was ironed.
Sample #5 was soaked in white vinegar for 30 minutes. It was allowed to dry and then was put in a hot dryer.
Sample #6 was soaked in salt water for 30 minutes. It was allowed to dry and then was ironed.
Sample #7 was soaked in salt water for 30 minutes. It was allowed to dry and then was put in a hot dryer.
Afterwards, all seven samples were hand washed in the sink and hung up to dry.

As a last step, we washed all seven samples in the washing machine.  As you can see, all of the samples look a lot like Sample #1.  We have to conclude that these “setting the ink” methods don’t seem to work.