9 Tutorials That Fly Sky High

Folding and flying paper airplanes is something every kid needs to do. This was one of the activities that my dad has dreamed of doing with my son Kai since he was an itty bitty baby. My dad bought a book full of paper airplane instructions that he kept in the closet of his office. As soon as Kai got old enough, my dad whipped out the book and went into full-on grandpa mode. Kai and my dad are BFFs and can fold and fly paper airplanes for hours. They create targets all over the house and even fly them off my dad’s seventh story balcony. The boys have folded dozens of paper airplanes—some that flew far, and some that were total duds. Here is how to make paper airplanes (with instructions included) that successfully fly far and high. Get your little pilots’ imaginations soaring, and check out the paper airplanes and tutorials in the slideshow.

You’ll also need to make an 8″ or 9″ round cake for the mountain that Te Fiti forms in the end of the movie. Use four boxes of cake mix for the main cake (each 9×13 pan takes two) and one more box for the round cake. Bake your cakes and let them cool. Use a cake leveler to make them flat on top, then place one cake on top of the other. The cakes are so big that I found it easier to cut the top one in half before trying to move it. Once it’s frosted, no one will ever know the difference…a little icing fixes everything! Frost about a third of the cake with white icing. That will be your beach.

Frost the rest of the cake with blue icing. Originally I left the sides alone because I didn’t know how far my island would extend out. Since it didn’t extend all the way out, I ended up covering the remaining parts blue. …and put it together with icing to form the mountain (this is the mountain that the Te Fiti turns into at the very end of the movie). Use a knife to shape it and place it at the end of the cake opposite the beach. Using green icing, frost the mountain, then cover it with flowers. You can use icing to make the flowers but these candy flowers make it really easy.

Once the island has been covered in frosting, it’s time to get to work on the beach. To create the waves crashing on the shore, make a line of blue frosting and a line of white frosting, then swirl them together. You can check out this beach cake to see how to do this in more detail. Add palm trees, then crush vanilla wafer cookies (the store brand works just fine) and cover your beach with “sand”. Next add the seashells and some Moana figurines. We used these Moana, Pua and Hei Hei figures that Keira had gotten for Christmas.

The trickiest part of making this Moana cake was adding the wave. At first I tried to stick it straight into the cake but it was a little heavy and I was worried that it would topple over. I ended up making a hole in the cake about 1/2 inch down, filling it with melted candy (the same candy I used to make the wave) and pushed the wave down into it. Once it set after a few minutes, the wave stayed in place without even a wobble. I made a green shell using the shell mold to create the heart of Te Fiti. I shaped it into more of a circle with a small cheese grater, then placed it under the wave. You can never have too many seashells on a tropical island!