Flight: A Virtual Adventure for Grades 3-6
By Karen Krupnick: Teacher

Below are activities to use with the tour, but you may have many more of your own. They are designed to cross all areas of the curriculum and make use of the rich resources of the Internet as well as good classroom practices.

History/Social Studies

• Using adding machine tape, make a timeline of the major inventions in the history of aviation. Use illustrations of the inventions that can be found on the Web sites to make your timeline attractive.
• Choose one of the pioneers of aviation and write a report about him or her. Tell about that person’s major contribution.
• Research one plane that was used in World War I and one that was used in World War II. Make a chart comparing the two planes. How were they alike? How were they different?
• Research a modern-day fighter plane. How does it compare to the airplanes you learned about in the above activity?
• Using World Wide Web sites for large newspapers, keep a journal of articles that are about flight in some way. Are there still pioneers in the field? Tell who you think they are and why you think so.

 Language Arts

• Write a poem about some aspect of flight that you have learned about.
• Write a fictional story that has an aviator as its protagonist. Include three facts that you have learned about flight in your story. Develop the plot well and be sure that your story has a strong conclusion.
• Do an Internet search for Antoine St. Exupéry. Learn about his background as an aviator. Then read his famous book for children, The Little Prince. How did he include his love for planes into the book?
• Make a list of vocabulary words that you have learned in your study of flight. Use them to make a wordsearch.
• Use what you have learned to make an ABC book about Flight. The site, The ABCs of Aviation will be useful for this activity.
• After reading through Flight Lessons, write a diary entry about your first flying experience..

Science

• Use the facts that you have learned about the principles of flight to make a picture book. Explain each term used and include a colored illustration on each page.
• PAPER AIRPLANE AERODYNAMICS
  

Math

• There is a measurement activity located at this PBS site: Balloon measurement
• Calculate the difference in years between the events that you placed on your timeline. Which two consecutive events had the greatest number of years between them?
• Do a search to find the speed, altitude or weight of a variety of different airplanes. Make a bar graph to show the comparison.
• This site is filled with math activities that are related to flight. Don't miss it!
  Plane Math

Art

• Create your own design for an airplane. Follow the principles of flight that you learned and use your wing invention discoveries to make your plane functional as well as attractive. Make a model of it out of paper and test its ability to fly.
• Design a hot air balloon.
• Design a spacecraft.
• Pretend that you are aboard a spacecraft Paint a picture of what you see out the window.
• Observe the artwork at this Web page:

Hot Air Balloons


• Using a medium of your choice, create a picture about something that is flight-related.

Music

• Compose a song about flying.
• How many songs can you think of that have something to do with flight? Make a list of all that you can think of.
• What piece of music would you like to be listening to if you were in a hot air balloon moving over the land? Why did you pick that piece?