Flying

 We had such a great time doing a flying unit, it started spontaneously one windy afternoon this spring, when the girls began building their own kites.  They went out playing with those and found quickly that they needed to modify their designs, as the wind just tore them to shreds.  So we came in and remade the kites, to fix the problems that they found in the first ones, different shapes, more tape and strings attached differently.  So then we went out and had a fun time flying kites.  They didn't really fly high in the air, but more flew out behind the running children.

 We then went to the library and got out a bunch of books on kite making, aerodynamics, airplanes, history of the first airplanes, the Wright brothers, the first man to fly across a body of water (the English Channel) and even the making of paper airplanes.  We had so much fun reading about flying, and having paper airplane flying contests and learning about why kites fly and flying a few more kites.  We would talk about what would change in the designs of our kites or airplanes to make them better or worse.  Kyndal was just last week making paper airplanes and then cutting the wings a little bit and see how it flew, and then trimming them a little more to see how that would change it.  We read about the people trying to make the first airplane and how the studied birds and how they bend the tips of their wings to change directions and how they applied that to designing a plane.  It is all so fascinating.

 We were so excited about this that we went to visit the aerospace museum in Calgary and there we saw a model of the first plane flown in Canada, it was later then the Wright brothers but still very early in history of the airplane, it was a tri-wing plane, very cool to see.  There we also learned more about the planes that were used in wars including ones personally related to their family.  They learned there about World War II and some of their families involvement, especially their Great-Grandpa Selman.  We talked about some of his experiences and learned more about what happened when you bail out of a plane going down.  Kyndal came home to tell her Daddy that his grandpa had a survival kit that contained chocolate, that he would eat 1 per day to have enough calories to keep him alive for x number of days.  It was neat information to apply to us personally.

We have so many more directions to take this learning and plan to continue with some of these streams, but I just love this process that it took.  It began with a fun game that the kids were doing, something that they were interested in.  Then we continued to learn more and apply it to our lives.  All of this was fun and not forced upon anyone, we all wanted to learn about this.  We loved the books we read and the activities and were able to share in this together.  I love this route of learning, following interests and curiosity.  It was all just right for us!