Science - Flight

Been a while since we studied a topic together. So while at a book sale at MPH recently, I chanced upon a book about Flight. I thought..why not do flight with my girl. Interesting topic. We also popped by Science Centre and grabbed a couple of books like this one here, all about Flight. It's like an introductory book with bits of information bout animals in flight, planes, rockets, the Wright brothers etc. We read some chapters from it, and Nel wrote down whatever she felt was important in a science notebook she keeps.

When we finished that, we took a look at another book, the one bought on a sale from MPH. It's a lovely workbook that covers flight quite thoroughly.  Projects and experiments suggested here are very interesting. Here's a look at its index.

We did the first chapter, more like a review for Nel really, coz we've covered this topic before and did other simple experiments about air taking up space. I like this particular experiment and so did Nel. We blew up a balloon into a container to see if it would fill the container totally.

As expected, this is what happened naturally..big gaps in the corners.

Then we did as instructed in the book. Nel took a straw, stuck it in the corners, and sucked air out with all her might, while  I blew the balloon up. Fun. hahaha!! (we had to stop several times to laugh! haha..)

 The result, a balloon that fits more snugly with less air space in the corners. :)

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Finally we decided to link it all to some literature. And we looked at several poems about the wind, included in a chapter found in another lovely textbook about flight, Wings and Rockets.

 We read through several poems, discussed how each author/culture perceived wind differently, the choices of words used, the many "characters" of the wind etc etc.

 Finally in a great hurry to complete, (rushed by my own teaching schedule!) I asked Nel to do quick thinking, and to write some poems of her own. These were done hurriedly, in less than 20 minutes. Not bad for quick writing work with simple illustration included!  Her poems below.

She really enjoyed this...and we'll continue to explore this topic further.