We met the aircraft 30 minutes away at a small airport and flew back to the school where Liz, a local skydiver, had gotten the young crowd fired up for the jumpers grand entrance.

Three jumpers parachuted in from 6,500 feet.

After their parachutes opened it was easy to look down and see the football field that was the landing zone. These demos are always a fun opportunity to land a parachute away from the standard airport environment -where parachute operations usually happen.

Neil comes swooping in with the GoPro parachute....

Garren nails his accuracy landing right on the 50yd line.

Mike put on a fun and dramatic show by flying in with an American flag attached to his parachute.

....there is time for a quick high-five before diving into the most important part of the performance

....the message!

....just a big trick to gets kids attention. I was a kid once and I remember how much easier it was to listen to someone I thought was cool, as opposed to someone I thought was boring. If landing a parachute on their football field doesn’t buy some cool points these days, then I don’t know what will.

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We use fun visual aids to keep the kids attention as well as to help them understand some of our teaching points. One of the student's favorite parts of the presentation is when we throw colored power.

....or idea with the students. The jumper then throws one packet of powder in the air, representing the goal they just shared. Then we get a group of people together helping discuss how to make that goal happen. Next, they all throw up the colored powder together showing how much bigger the idea becomes by having the team work on it together

We talk about the value of having a solid plan. No amount of dreaming is going to make your idea real. At some point, you have to get down to the "nitty gritty" details. We hold up a marble and a beach ball, each representing an “idea”, and ask the students which idea is better. They always say the beach ball because of it’s size which, is a fun teaching point to talk about the value of a small plan that is really solid and a big plan that is full of air.

....is often the scariest part of making an idea real.. trying it! Through a series of questions and answers with students in the crowd, we talk about how to handle failure and how our jump that morning wouldn’t have happened if we let fear stop us in our tracks. We also talk about how we managed risk during the jump to ensure a safe and accurate landing.

....with conditions ideal for jumping, it was time to send the students back to class. We were still buzzing from the excitement of a successful demo jump and felt lucky to have squeezed in a performance before school gets out for summer break.

....is usually made possible by a caring parent reaching out to the school and making the introduction to Jump For Joy. In this case it was my bearded friend Mark on the right side of this picture who has a son that goes to the middle school. Big props to Mark for introducing us to the school and a big shout out to Vice Principle Dean (far left) for being an amazing host. We would love to come back next year!

Jump For Joy is a 501c3 approved non profit funded 100% through private donations. If you want to help keep this program in the air please visit:

www.jump-4-joy.org