Planes, Jets and Homeschool Pod
Our first month of running a small homeschool pod was a success! We learned a bunch of terminology, flew some paper airplanes, learned about history, did some graphs and made some great memories.
We started off by reading one of my favorite books about a pilot. Violet the Pilot is a sweet story that teaches the reader that innovation can help to change the world. And it is great to follow your dreams even if your interests are different then other peoples. Be sure to read this adorable picture book!
As a group, we learned about the parts of planes and jets. Since there are so many different types of planes, we focused on the basic parts they all have…. Winglet, Fuselage, Cockpit, Slats, Aileron, Flaps, Spoiler, Stabilizers, Rudder and the Elevator.
I personally had no idea what all those parts were! Good thing I had a few amazing books that illustrated the anatomy of planes and jets wonderfully! If you have an inquisitive kid, these books are great to explore with very detailed illustrations. I personally like to have illustrated reference books for our home library because they can add so much to our lessons. Whether you are studying flight or military battles, it is helpful to know the parts of a plane. Of these three books, Jet Plane by David Macaulay, is may absolute favorite book that we used. It is perfect for understanding the basic parts of a plane and introducing kids to flight and how a plane is laid out if they have not flown previously. it is more of a story book with reference material included then strictly a reference book. Plus, I love his books and illustrations! We have quite a few of them and I will share them on this blog over the next few years.
We also used the Visual Dictionary of Flight by DK. This is definitely more of a reference book with very detailed pictures. This book has quite a few military planes including some from both World Wars. I plan to use this book when we get into the history of World War I and II in the next few years. It is refreshing to be able to re-use resources throughout our homeschooling journey!
The last illustrated reference book we used is Planes (Look Inside Cross-Section) by Michael Johnstone. Since we have a group of kids that are from different families, it was a good idea to have a few different books that could be swapped amongst the group. This book also has some military planes as well as more commercial planes than the Visual Dictionary of Flight.
We have kids that are in kindergarten and first grade so easy readers are a great option for them to read independently and still feel like they are learning. How Airplanes Get from Here to There by Jordan D. Brown has just about 40 pages and is broken down into 4 chapters. This style of easy reader is the PERFECT transition for kids who are just about ready to dive into chapter books. It does a great job of giving the overview of the topic and boosting the confidence of the reader because they read a book with chapters, which can feel over whelming until you try it. First Flight by George Shea also has chapters! This book is slightly longer at 45 pages and 6 short chapters but is still heavily illustrated and inviting. I would recommend these books for kids 5-7 depending on their reading ability.
One of my main goals for our homeschool pod is to teach the kids how to give presentations or speeches. This is definitely important in preparation for the real world as they will most likely need to present in front of business associates or clients. As a homeschooler, we do most of our work independently, which has MAJOR advantages in my opinion. We can lack the skills of presenting in front of people that you are not 100% comfortable with. This is why each month I plan to give the students an assignment to present. This month was a short biography about a pioneer in the field of aviation. I broke it down by family for the siblings and then my daughter and one other “lone kiddo” did the same person.
Overall, the kids did great, and some people wrote out their speech, some did a google slides presentation and one memorized their speech. I gave very few parameters to see what each kid would come up with and I was impressed with each!
The books I provided were all from my home library but of course the students could do additional research if they choose to. Amelia Earhart, The Wright Brothers and the Tuskegee Airmen were the subject of the presentations. The Who Was book series is one of my favorites and we utilize them in our homeschool quite a bit more than I thought we would. They are easy to read, not too long and seem pretty unbiased (at least from the ones we have read so far).
Another book series I have been collecting as I come across them is Childhood Or Famous Americans. The idea of these books is to bring to life the childhood and the times of which the historical figure grew up. I understand that they are FICTIONALIZE biographies but there are still elements of educational material in each. It is important to teach that these great figures in history were once like our own kiddos. They had struggles and learned from their own experience and these books really do help kids relate and sympathize with the historic figures…. not everything you read has to be 100% educational. It can teach real world lessons without every detail exactly how it happened.
After learning about the history and parts of a planes and jets, we made our own paper airplane! We started with using a kit and making them together. the kit we used was amazing! It came with printed paper that had printed lines of where the folds were needed. Each plane design has five or six sheets of paper allowing for mistakes or improving designs. for us it worked well as we had six kids in our group.
We also discussed how to improve on the designs by adding weight with paper clips, cut paper straws or taping the designs together. It was great to see the creativity that the kids came up with!
On the final day of our homeschool pod, we try to do something fun! The week before I gave each kid the SAME four pieces of paper, cardstock, printer paper, newspaper weight and construction paper. I told them they could make any type of paper plane with each sheet of paper, they could add anything to the plane, color them or tape them together. It was FREE REIGN! That was my favorite part because each kiddo was very excited to show their designs and test out the planes. We stood on a straight line and flew each type of paper plane at the same time. The results were then measures and we graphed the results. The goal was to see if a specific type of paper makes better planes. Clearly it was not a scientific experiment, but it was fun!
As I wrap up this epicly long post, I want to encourage you to think outside of the box when it comes to teaching your kids. We do not need to do it all. We can lean on our other homeschool friends who are better at specific things. For instance, I am all about planning out lessons and teaching history through reading BUT one of the other moms in our group is AMAZING at teaching how to implement lessons into practical examples. She was great at trouble shooting the paper planes and helping the kiddos to improve on their designs and discuss WHY the changes helped. We homeschool to offer opertunies to our kids that they would not have otherwise, lets remember that we do not have to be the exclusive teacher! I encourge you to get out in the world and LEARN SOMETHING!