The Wright Brothers’ Bicycle Shop
The Wright Brothers’ Home
Full Scale Model of the Flyer
While working on our Wright Brothers project earlier this fall we did a lot of fun activities out of the book Planes, Gliders, Helicopters and Other Flying Machines. One that the kids enjoyed was the Hot Air Balloon experiment we did when we were talking about lighter than air flying.
What you need… small plastic bottle, balloon, heat safe bowl and a kettle/pot. Stretch the balloon over the opening of the empty bottle. Note how it hangs down. Talk about what is in the bottle. This isn’t necessarily apparent to young kids. Even an empty bottle has air in it. Predict what will happen when the air gets hot. Heat water. Test your prediction by placing the bottle in a heat safe bowl filled with hot water (mom should do this for safety reasons). You will have to hold the bottle down… empty bottles like to float… but that is another experiment ;). Watch as the balloon inflates. Talk about why and then predict what will happen when you place it in the freezer.
We ended up going back and forth from hot to cold several times as the kids were fascinated with this experiment. We did this experiment a couple weeks ago but I didn’t get a chance to blog about it so we are using it as our entry for the Unplugged Challenge Theme B.
Hehe, doesn’t everyone do school in Hogwarts robes?
Bug came up to me about a week ago, while I was in the middle of something else, with a little plastic plane in his hand and a sheet of paper… "Mom can you help me make it have that big flat piece so it will fly?"
HUH? "How do you want me to get the paper on… can you draw me a picture?" We have taken to making the boy draw diagrams of what he wants since he has very speficic ideas of how he wants something done (and tends to whine if it isn’t done to his satisfaction).
"Like this Mom."
Ahhh… I could now tell that he didn’t have a wing modification in mind… what he really wanted was a parachute.
"Hmmm…. I don’t think this paper is really going to work for a parachute." Silly, busy mom… I went back to what I was doing. I wish I could say I jump on every one of these projects… but sometimes laundry does need to get folded ya know.
It didn’t matter… he came back a few minutes later holding a plastic bag and a some thread.
"Ok Buddy… let’s see if this works."
Fairy was immediately in on the project too. We’ve made several of these little parachutes now and have tried different objects tied to the end. The little plastic cowboys the kids get as rewards from Tae Kwon Do have been deemed the best. But it was good for them to try the heavier stuff too.
Here is a quick run down if you would like to make one. What you need is a plastic shopping bag (although we have all those reusable bags we still seem to end up with a handful of these in the house), thread, tape and a light weight toy.
Cut the plastic bag into a 20" or so square.
Cut out 4 pieces of thread about 18" long. Using a small piece of tape, attach a thread to each corner.
Pull all the threads together in the center and tie your toy to the end.
After learning about the Wright Brothers’ Bicycle shop, we spent some time taking a long hard look at what goes into a bicycle. The kids noticed the obvious things first, wheels, seat, handle bars but after a while they got more detailed pointing out the petals, chains, gears, etc. We talked about what powers a bicycle and how the wheels turn. We talked about how you control the bike (direction, brakes) and why that was important. We also talked about the materials used to make a bicycle. The kids required little to no prompting on these observations. Bug was truly fascinated with the mechanics.
"We were lucky enough to grow up in an environment where there was always much encouragement to children to pursue intellectual interest; to investigate whatever aroused curiosity. In a different kind of environment, our curiosity might have been nipped long before it could have borne fruit."
— Orville Wright
We built our own "bat" toy today… in other words a rubber band powered flying toy. We stumbled upon a kit at Cracker Barrel actually for just a couple dollars (similar to this one). It is fairly fragile and required glue after about 10 flights… but the general premise is fun. Bug can’t wait for it to dry to take it outside again.
UPDATE: It has withstood about 2 more hours of play this afternoon. Good intro to planes for a couple bucks.
After lunch we grabbed a quilt, our paper airplane book (Pocket Flyers) and our current read aloud (Thunder From the Sea) and headed outside to enjoy the afternoon sun.
The kids had a blast trying out the paper airplanes, suggesting modifications and seeing of course which one flew the furthest. They also determined that the playstructure was the best launching pad… especially for the helicopters.
