Airplane Week

This week we studied airplanes and I was blown away by the interest the boys displayed as well as their ability to direct themselves in their study! Jonas began the week with a beautiful example of one of his paper airplanes that he frequently designs, folds and redesigns according to flight capability. This one wasn’t the best of his fliers but still sailed across the room when thrown right.

I tried something new to catch his interest in writing his letters and was happy to see it worked without much effort! Instead of just starting him on writing the individual letters I wrote out the word ‘airplane’ and had him copy it. Then we broke it down into individual letters again. He liked being able to write the whole word and the fact that writing the word took up his whole line.

Thanks to my friend Kristin’s blog Cactus Schoolhouse I was made aware of www.currclick.com where a homeschooling parent can find all sorts of reasonable teaching aides and curriculum. Searching through available ideas there I found a project book for airplanes and flight. We read bits and pieces but found the majority a bit too advanced for the boys. However, we studied the four main things most airplanes have in common: wings, cockpit, fuselage and tail. After pointing these out several times with Jonas we began a project to test his understanding. He got to color his own airplane and cut out arrows with labels on them for those basic sections of the airplane. He taped them on the airplane just where they were supposed to go. Ronan followed every move Jonas made trying to copy him as to where he put the arrows. However, Ronan doesn’t quite understand to turn the point of the arrow toward what he wants to label.

As for Math, we went on a packing adventure. I labeled 10 cards with individual numbers (1-10) and put the number in stars on the back. Then we took out rolling backpacks to the playroom with a bucket full of animals. The boys each picked a card, figured out what the number was and then put that number of animals in their backpacks. We repeated this again with the next card adding a new number of animals with the previous number. The third card, however, was our subtraction card so they removed that number and told me how many were left.

The boys created several airplanes out of play dough during the week on their own without prompting and Jonas used his knowledge learned from studying airplane parts to include a propeller among other things on his airplane. They also watched several videos from the library on flight and airplanes. My favorite of these was a “The Way Things Work” video about flight where cartoon characters are trying to deliver an awning via mammoth in a wind-storm and accidently make the mammoth fly because of the ‘lift’ created by the air flowing over the tightly wrapped awning strapped to the mammoth’s back.
Both boys practiced their Spanish word of the week ‘avión’ several times throughout the week. I also continue to talk with them more in Spanish, expecting them to understand me but helping them to figure out the meaning where needed.

On to a study of Fall!