Ornithopters

Remember a long time ago over the summer when I was day-dreaming about doing a unit study on the history of flight? I put a few ideas together, and ordered some books, but then it kind of pittled out as we started going on the new school year and I had so much energy and so many great plans. Then December came and we were in a rut. We stopped doing most of our school work, and pretty much took the month off to focus on Christmas activities and family events. Well now it's January, and neither I nor my kids were very excited to get back into the normal grove. We needed something to switch things up a bit, something different, and fun. I read The Aviator's Wife, and suddenly all my old enthusiasm for doing the History of Flight came surging back. I found the COOLEST book, called Explore Flight! With 25 Great Projects by Anita Yasuda.  And it is exactly what it says and more. Its the history of flight, written in vocabulary meant to be read by 6-12 year olds. And it has 25 awesome projects to do along the way. And when I say awesome, I really mean it! All the projects are done with simple materials that you just might already have stashed away in your art supplies or kitchen. AND! They are the kind of projects that Lincoln can read the directions and do with very little help from me. I provide the supplies, and remain available to answer any questions like "Am I doing this right?" and "How does this look?" and badda-bing badda-boom, he does the project pretty much all on his own. I love it. And so does he.

So we started our History of Flight unit study. At some point we'll sit down and put together a time-line on a large piece of butcher paper and hang it up on the wall. But today, both Lincoln and I were eager to get going on our cool new book. I had him read the first chapter out loud to me (check reading off the list of to-do subjects for the day!) and he was excited and happy to do it. No whining, no arguing over the amount of time or the number of pages he needed to read, just excitement to get to the project at the end. Yay! It's a win-win.

The first chapter is all about the 4 forces that determine how an airplane moves in the air. Lift and gravity, thrust and drag. The book said it was very important to understand these terms and how they effect the plain, because that would help us understand how flight developed, and why different models of aircraft worked or not. So I had Lincoln make this diagram in his notebook, and define the terms. (Writing? - check. Grammar? - check. Spelling? - check!)

Of course, once the reading and diagramming were out of the way, it was time to get on with the fun stuff! We learned about Leonardo Da Vinci and how he studied birds in flight and drew many diagrams of flying machines which he called ornithopters. One of his drawings looked like this:



None of Da Vinci's flying contraptions were ever built in his lifetime, and if they would have, it would have been discovered that they were too heavy to fly. But he got his ideas from studying the flight of birds, and that's what the important part was. Then we watched a video clip about an ornithopter built in 2010 by some students and the University of Toronto.



It was cool.

To end the morning, we built our own mini models following the directions in the book. We flew them for awhile and then hypothesized about what would make them fly better. Lincoln got really into it. I think he changed the tail of his plain four or five different times. He added feathers, then took away feathers, then added more in different places. It was so fun to watch! History? - check. Science? - check. I love homeschooling!!

Somewhere in the middle of flying our ornithopters, it came up that sometimes people name their airplanes. So of course, we all had to stop a moment and name ours. Lincoln picked Swooper, Adelia's was Flootey, Ivan's was Tricky, and mine was MomStar. :)