This is our third flight unit. My boys do better with shorter studies that repeat. Some kids like to take 1/2 a year or the whole year and really dig in. My boys like to dig, but also need time to process. We have found that if we spread a unit out, we can pick up where we left off, continue to dig deeper every time, and they retain a lot more. This disjointed approach would drive some kiddos crazy, but it works very well for my boys. This time, we were really going to bump it up, and both boys were looking forward to this study, and it didn't disappoint. As a matter of fact, as I sit here typing this blog, the boys are STILL on their computer looking up and playing airplane games and chatting facts, and it's been weeks since we've "officially" ended our flight unit.
I'll list our resources, but if you have the opportunity, please try and get to an airport or museum, or even contact your local airfield and see what they will do to introduce your child to flight. We've found that the folks in the aviation field are some of the nicest around. On to our unit!
We're very, very lucky to live near two awesome flight museums. We started our flight study with a visit to one of them. This one focus' on restoring old war planes. It was really cool to walk into the hanger and see so many vintage planes. There were fact cards near each one explaining what, when, and where, and how the planes were used over their lifetime.
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| Andrew loves bi-planes, and was thrilled to see this one up close! |
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| Lucas enjoyed reading about each plane and liked the ones that were works-in-progress and could see the insides. |
The museum is located next to a very small airport. The boys REALLY wanted to walk over and take a look, and possibly do a little plane spotting. Honestly, I hesitated to do this. I didn't know if we would be allowed to just walk into this small airport. I didn't know if today's security restrictions would allow us, if we would make people mad, if they would kick us out, if we'd be breaking laws. We were meeting friends afterwards and I didn't know how "behind" this would make us. I almost said no, it was right there on my lips. I'm soooooo glad I put all those fears behind me, and said "yes, let's go explore". Little did I know at the time how awesome this little side trip would turn out.
When we walked into the terminal, there was no one around. Just some seats and a door leading out to the runway. There was a little office to the side, so I peeked in and wanted to make sure we were okay to sit and watch the private planes land. The lady at the desk gave us the okay, and even gave us directions on how to get up to the private viewing deck on top of the building! Sweet! We were up there for a bit when the same lady who was at the desk walked up to the view deck escorted by an airport worker. She said that the airport was very slow that day, and cleared it with the air traffic control tower for us to go up to the tower and take a tour! WHAT?!?!?! So cool!! First, though, they were going to drive us around the terminal on the golf cart so we could get a close up view of some of the planes and helicopters. Awesome!
The control tower was so cool! We met the air traffic controller, he explained his job to us, then he showed the boys how to track planes on the satellite. He gave them binoculars and they tracked the planes on the gps, then they figured out which direction they were entering the airspace in, and they tracked the planes using the binoculars until it landed. So cool! I think I said "thank you" about a gazillion times. It was just such an awesome experience! Here are some pictures. I didn't take a lot, I was too busy enjoying the moment, but I'm glad I got a few.
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| The terminal |
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| The Air Traffic Control Tower |
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| Getting a tour, but also getting a chance to watch the ATC in action as he took calls! |
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| My favorite picture ever! After tracking a plane via satellite, the boys followed it's flight path, and watched it all the way to the airport. | | |
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Over the next couple of weeks, we focused on how air pressure allows a plane to fly. We did air pressure experiments galore, we learned about the Bernoulli Principle in a fun, hands-on way, we read a lot of picture book biographies about historical figures in flight, we charted them on a timeline, read a lot about different types of flying machines from past to present, watched a lot of videos about flight, played with our newly purchased flight simulator, and we had a blast digging deeper into a topic my boys really enjoy.
One of my favorite activities was (after reading about the Wright Brothers) measuring out the distance of the Wright Brothers first flight down our street. We then timed ourselves jogging down, and realized we could have outrun the first flight! That was fun! We then tried to fly our gliders the distance, but that was much harder. I won't list all the activities we did, but I will post my Pinterest board site with my ideas, which can be found
here. Most of what we did can be found there, plus a lot more that we didn't get a chance to do. Another resource we utilized heavily this time was our Steve Spangler Science Kit. We joined his
kit-of-the-month club over the summer and I've been stockpiling the kits to correspond with our studies. His All About Air kit was awesome! I'm not a scientist, so I'll take all the help I can get! These kits are a great starting point. Here are some pictures of our experiments and learning at home. I must admit, I didn't do a good job at capturing pictures this time, and didn't capture most of our home learning.
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| The look of concentration! Experimenting with the Bernoulli Principle. |
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| This experiment was from our Spangler Science kit! |
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We wrapped up our flight unit with two more awesome field trips. The first, was to another museum. This one has a lot of old airplane memorabilia, and the museum itself isn't as interesting (to the boys, I really like it) as the first museum we visited. HOWEVER, the museum backs up to our city's airport. Not the big airport, but a commercial and private airport just the same, and the boys absolutely love going and plane spotting. We went in the afternoon, and had the perfect weather conditions for the planes to land and take off from the runway near us! Score! We were the only visitors to the museum, so we had many of the volunteers come outside and chat with us while watching the planes. The boys loved trying to identify the planes that were landing (they were pretty spot on), and asked really great questions.
After a while, another gentleman volunteer, who was extremely knowledgeable, came out and started chatting with the boys. He was thrilled with their questions and started explaining some really neat things about the runway numbers (They are set to a compass rose and are really degrees. So if you're taking off on runway 9, it's really 90 degrees or East! Cool!) and even drew out a compass rose to explain things visually to the boys. They enthusiastically chatted about, and identified planes for over 2 hours. They stayed until closing time. When I started gathering the boys up, he mentioned that he was actually the museum president!!! He invited us to come back the next day (free of charge) to celebrate international flights beginning at the airport next door. Ummm...yes!!
We came back the next morning and were able to see the first international flights arrive and depart. The museum was having a party that night and were making preparations. We were invited to join them in their private hanger while they were getting ready. This included a walk ON THE RUNWAY (the legal walking part, of course) with airplanes taking off and lading right over our heads. We also got to see the museum's private planes and climb around inside of them. It was so much fun!
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| The entrance to the old airport turned museum |
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| On the runway as close as you can get to a commercial plane landing! The pictures don't show how close we were!! |
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| Inside the museum's private hanger |
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| Checking out their private plane collection |
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| We got to go inside this plane, it was awesome! |
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| We couldn't get inside of this one, but they opened the doors and let the boys look at the controls up close |
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Our last field trip was to the air show. Whew!!! So much fun and excitement was packed into those two weeks. I was blown away by the kindness of the museum and aviation community. They really went out of their way to connect with the boys. I'll end this post with a few pictures from the air show.
