Aerodynamics.

Its been a while since I have been here, we have been so busy.

I thought I would pop in and post our lesson plan for our new project as it will be interesting and full of fun and well worth sharing... Aerodynamics.

We have started this long term project as Oliver wanted to know how birds fly and it has gone from there, question after question so I decided to break it down for him and move into aerodynamics in a fun way also incorporating some fun maths and geography and also some history and probably a lot more along the way.

We started off here with how do birds fly.

Making Paper Aeroplanes

Lots of questions came from that so we moved on to something that we can see, we made paper planes of varying designs. 

Distance Flight Challenge 

  We also joined in a distance flight challenge to see how far we can get our aeroplane to fly whilst we do all the other projects for Aerodynamics. You can find the  Distance Challenge Here here and you can also join in and enter your location and become it's pilot and add to our mileage count.

Oliver and Olivia say 

"thank you for sending their plane around the world"

 Kite Flying

As it is also National Kite Month between March 30th and May 5th we are also kite making and of course flying. We used this simple method. 

Trips out to see aerodynamics in action

We will also be visiting the Manchester Airport Visitors Centre and Wild Wings Birds of Prey Centre which has sadly got to move but not too far away and hopefully will be still at the old site when we visit after the school holidays.

Experiments

For Gravity and Air we are using the fun ping pong ball and a hair dryer method and the Bin bag with an egg Parachute.

Reading List

There is a fabulous array of books about gravity many of the non fiction books can be found here > Non-fiction Books about gravity <  many of the fiction story books can be found here > Fiction Books based on gravity < and the educational text books can be found here > Educational Text Books <  I have compiled a list below of some of our favourite books each one is a link so you can go and check them out:-

• The magic school bus - Discovers Flight - Joanna Cole

•  Down to Earth: The Story of Gravity (Science Works)

• Gravity by Jason Chin

•  First Flight: The Story of Tom Tate and the Wright Brothers - George Shea

• My Father's Flying Machine (Peter Rabbit) by Warne 

• Gravity is a Mystery by Franklyn Mansfield Branley  

•  You Wouldn't Want to Live Without Gravity by Anne Rooney (author), Mark Bergin (illustrator)