Posts Tagged ‘flight unit study’
Flight Finally Finished!
Obviously, I am ridiculously behind in blog posts, so I am posting LOTS to get caught up. I should’ve posted these pictures of Elijah’s Flight Journal three weeks ago, but better late than never.
Before I post pictures, I am going to try to answer questions you might have.
1. What did we use as our spine for this study?
Amanda Bennett’s unit & FIAR’s unit- The Glorious Flight
As for additional resources, I am not going to give you a list of books we read. It would be ridiculously long, and most of the suggestions were found right in the Amanda Bennett unit study.
2. How long did you spend on this unit?
About four weeks. We didn’t get through the entire Amanada Bennett unit. We can always pick back up where we left off OR do the unit again when the boys are older. We were ready to move on to a new topic.
3. Where did you get the notebook printables?
I made most, found a few online, and one was a printable from a Scholastic book (Amelia Earhart mini book). I will be sharing them at Homeschool Share soon. I’m not sure if I will go ahead and make printables for the entire flight unit study (since we only did 2/3 of it). I might. I might add a few generic minit books…who knows.
4. This isn’t a question, but...
We have had so much fun with this unit. If you have a student interested in flying things, give this one a go! Here is a list of some of the fun we’ve had with this unit.
~Hot Air Balloon Project
~Constructing a Model of a Biplane (and making paper airplanes, too!)
~Orville Wright Birthplace & Museum Field Trip
~Fly-in Cruise-in (at our local airport)
~Toured an Airport (free!)
~Visited National Museum of the US Air Force (free admission!)
Here are the pictures of Elijah’s Flight Journal. A few printables are from around the web; the links were given in the unit study.
Pages 1-2 (Icarus, Leonardo, Hot Air Balloons)
I think this is the first time that I didn’t write in any of the minit books for Elijah. He put a lot of hard work into completing them!
Pages 3-4 (gliders, four forces, and label a helicopter)
Pages 5-6 (Wright Brothers, Bessie Coleman, Harriet Quimby)
Copywork (all the ideas are included in the unit)
Words of Wisdom (each day of the unit study gives you 2-3 words of wisdom to look up)
Amelia Earhart
Elijah’s Glorious Flight Lapbook is glued to the inside back cover of this notebook.
Here are a few more shots I want to include– Elijah & his model plane.
Fly In ~ Cruise In (2009)
They ate pancakes, pancakes (and more pancakes…and sausage). They saw planes, planes, and more planes. And some helicopters, too. And even a B-17 bomber. It was a great plane-watching day for the Brainerd boys!
Wilbur Wright Birthplace Field Trip
"I can remember when Wilbur and I could hardly wait for morning to come to get at something that interested us. That’s happiness!" –Orville Wright
I just love that quote (I saw it while on the field trip), so I had to post it! I wonder how many of our children have something they can’t wait to get at every morning. Something to think about. :)
—-
Sometimes you just aren’t sure what a field trip will be like. I was unsure about this one. We had to travel over an hour, and I just didn’t know if Wilbur Wright’s birthplace was going to keep 15 preschoolers & elementary students engaged. BUT…it was fantastic. I can’t even begin to share it all with you. I think the tour was about 2 hours long.
First we started outside where our fantastic tour guide showed off some of his model plane collection.
They had signs posted to show how far each of the first few flights went.
Next, we went through the museum. We learned about the lives of the Wrights, watched a movie about the first flight, and saw an exact replica of that historic plane that made it into the air in 1903. Elijah even got to practice steering it.
Then we went through a make shift workshop/sleeping/eating area similar to what the Wright Brothers constructed so that they would have a place to work on parts of the plane (only one wing would fit in the building at a time). They made this because they were tired of being eaten alive by various bugs!
We also got to visit a "town" that was set up to portray the early 1900s. There was a school, general store, dress shop, barber shop, and (of course) Wright’s Bicycle Shop and print shop.
After we were done in the museum, we wandered over to the house for a tour. We also got to go through the outbuildings– the barn, the smokehouse, etc.
After a picnic lunch, the kids were treated (by their mothers) with some simple flying sticks. Can you see them in the second picture? :)
Completely worthwhile. Loved this field trip!
The Glorious Flight
While working through the Flight Unit Study, we decided to work in a Five in a Row unit,The Glorious Flight, focusing on Louis Bleriot.
Field Trip!
We visited a small local airport with our co-op friends. The pilot did a great job with the kids and answered all of our questions about his job and his plane.
Trying French Foods
~Crepes (with homemade strawberry jam and whipped cream!)
~French Doughnuts (we made these together for tea-time)
Lapbook Pictures
We used the lessons from Five in a Row Volume I & the lapbook printables are from Homeschool Share
Learning about Roman Numerals
Elijah wrote, "He was the first to fly across the sea. (1909) He did not give up."
Elijah loved the descriptive writing lesson. The inside of the book says…
it is very tasty
shaped like a big chocolate chip
silver wrapper
sweet and smooth
Can you guess what he was describing?
The count to ten in French printable is from Enchanted Learning.
The flag of France book is a graduated book that has two sections
Fun times with The Glorious Flight!
Flying High!
Last week we started Amanda Bennett’s History of Flight unit study.
One of the weblinks in the study shows you how to make a large hot air balloon out of tissue paper. I decided that we’d give it a whirl because I knew both boys would go crazy over it!
Just so you know, this is involved (but worth it!).
Here are parts of our process.
Jason making the pattern.
Simon "helping" with the pattern.
Elijah working on making the panels (six total). The original instructions call for 2- 20 x 30 inch pieces of tissue paper for each panel. I could only find 20 x 20 inch pieces, so we had to use THREE pieces of tissue for each panel (making the 60 inches).
Six panels complete!
The six panels are stacked and the pattern gets pinned down. Then you cut around the pattern. I did this for Elijah. Actually, Jason and I took over from this point on as it gets somewhat complicated.
After lots of glue sticking, we have a balloon!
You can’t just hold the balloon like this; it took two of us to get it going (Jason held it up high by holding the loop on the top with a long stick). Once it was mostly inflated, though, I got to back up and snap a picture.
We did three launches and we were able to retrieve the balloon each time. We hope to find a field to fly it in so we don’t have to worry about power lines or trees.
The rest of the pictures are self-explanatory!
