Planes, Trains and Automobiles--ok--maybe just Planes!

We have been doing lots with school. For me, the easiest way to plan is to randomly pick a theme and then come up with some things to go with it. Pinterest is such a wealth of ideas. We recently did planes/flight.

As usual, the boys really wanted to do science experiments. The first one we did was seeing which weight of paper would cause an airplane to fly the farthest. We used cardstock, printer paper and tissue paper. Ollie hypothesized that the cardstock would fly the farthest and Dawson thought the printer paper. We quickly discovered the printer paper was the winner! The boys loved flying the airplanes. One other experiment we did was to see if a flat sheet of paper or a plastic bag would fall to the ground faster. The boys stood on the coffee table and dropped them. It's fun to teach them about drag and air pressure!

The boys learned a few terms- lift, air pressure and thrust. To demonstrate air pressure simply took a bowl of water and a cup. The boys and I pushed the cup straight down in the water and discovered that the bottom of the cup stayed dry! We did a thrust demonstration with a rubberband and folded piece of paper. The boys pulled the rubberband back and let the paper go flying across the room. For lift, we cut a strip of paper and held the small end in our lips allowing the strip to hang down past our chins, then we blew on top of the paper and watched it rise! Such fun. Later in the week, we had a quiz of terms.

I also gave the boys straws and some balls and pieces of paper. They spent time using their air to push the objects around. It was funny because the boys thought they were really tough. It kind of brought out their Hulk!


We practiced our ordinals by gluing passengers in our plane windows in a certain order. We wrote about what we learned. We learned letters that we in different words about flight. We followed directions to color airplanes. I made an airplane snack. We got back out our airplane playset. I wanted to take a trip to the airport but we haven't yet. I think we will soon though! We made airplanes out of toilet paper tubes.

 Overall, we played. We learned. We had fun. Sounds like a productive week to me!