How to MAKE A KITE

There are few joys as simple and exhilarating as flying a brightly coloured kite in the breeze. For great family fun, build your own toy craft with this easy step-by-step

After an hour of quiet concentration, snipping, gluing and tying, it was made. My youngest child was delighted. Slow time spent with a parent is precious to a seven year old, and the feeling is mutual.

Warning that it might not fly – might crash and fall to pieces – I took her out the back gate, over the meadow, our pockets stuffed with tape and string and crepe paper for running repairs.

My kind of kite-making, I admit, is not an exact science, and there may be better kite designs out there than the diamond on the following page. But I wanted to start with something easy. I lack the patience to learn new knots and to untangle knotted instructions.

Our diamond, with coaxing, took jerkily to the skies and hoisted itself up, where it bobbed and trembled, nervously, like a puppy on a leash.

To my daughter, it was a kind of miracle.

After a while, the wind dropped and it came crashing to earth. We scooped up the bedraggled remains and walked home, hand in hand and happy. At the back door, the little one announced to her mother: “It flied! It flied!”